Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SQP (Opening new markets for Single Quantum Photodetectors)
Période du rapport: 2020-04-01 au 2021-09-30
Scientific experiments and medical diagnostics rely heavily on optical measurements.Single Quantum pioneers a ground-breaking new technology based on detecting single photons with superconducting nanowires, combining the world’s highest detection efficiency with time resolution and noise performances without any compromises. However these detectors were meant for the scientific quantum optics market. This project has been developed to enhance this system for the larger industrial domain, focusing initially on bioimaging. Single Quantum already sold dozens of systems in several quantum market domains. Following a strong market pull from the scientific quantum communication market Single Quantum has established its technology already as the standard in this market. Our customers here are academic researchers, research institutions and companies developing quantum cryptography systems, such as Toshiba, Huawei and ID Quantique. At Single Quantum we want to put to use quantum technologies to a wider number of applications, benefitting society and shift the application centre of mass from academia to general-purpose applications. Therefore, we will bring our innovation to a new, larger domain: bioimaging technology. This field is booming, with technologies developed over decades of research now making their way to the market. The race for commercialising the best ultrasensitive detectors, limited only by the laws of physics, has just started and its societal impact could well be comparable to that of the development of the microscope.
The goal of this project is to expand our market from the scientific quantum optics market, that we dominate, to the much larger industrial quantum technologies market for bioimaging. Our potential customers are biologists and chemists whose imaging abilities are limited by the current light detectors. These detectors suffer from low time resolution, low sensitivity, and high noise level. Better imaging will result in a better understanding of fundamental biological processes. In the near future, this will lead to new medical imaging techniques, resulting in faster, more efficient and more accurate diagnostics and treatments and ultimately tob etter care at lower cost.
The overall objective of this SME Instrument Phase 2 project is to take our single photon detection system to full commercial maturity (TRL9). We have determined four smaller objectives to take the innovation to the market:
1) Component optimisation and core technology development: engineering of design improvements for the system for bioimaging applications, optimising the overall efficiency to enable optimal live imaging and, optimising time resolution for the highest spatial resolution – automated cryostat control for optimised user-friendliness – Hereby also reducing the cost of goods for all modules by 25%
2) Expansion of the production capacity
3) Demonstrate and assess the performance: demonstrate the developed systems to potential customers, verify robustness, reliability, and performance and implement feedback immediately to ensure a lean development.
4) After testing and validation, we aim to commercialise the system in the scientific and clinical bio-imaging market by attracting customers and business partners and to create market demand, developing a business plan and commercialisation strategy and establish agreements with key customers and early adapters in the European scientific and clinical bio-imaging market.
During the project we have reached these 4 objectives.
The goal of this project is to expand our market from the scientific quantum optics market, that we dominate, to the much larger industrial quantum technologies market for bioimaging. Our potential customers are biologists and chemists whose imaging abilities are limited by the current light detectors. These detectors suffer from low time resolution, low sensitivity, and high noise level. Better imaging will result in a better understanding of fundamental biological processes. In the near future, this will lead to new medical imaging techniques, resulting in faster, more efficient and more accurate diagnostics and treatments and ultimately tob etter care at lower cost.
The overall objective of this SME Instrument Phase 2 project is to take our single photon detection system to full commercial maturity (TRL9). We have determined four smaller objectives to take the innovation to the market:
1) Component optimisation and core technology development: engineering of design improvements for the system for bioimaging applications, optimising the overall efficiency to enable optimal live imaging and, optimising time resolution for the highest spatial resolution – automated cryostat control for optimised user-friendliness – Hereby also reducing the cost of goods for all modules by 25%
2) Expansion of the production capacity
3) Demonstrate and assess the performance: demonstrate the developed systems to potential customers, verify robustness, reliability, and performance and implement feedback immediately to ensure a lean development.
4) After testing and validation, we aim to commercialise the system in the scientific and clinical bio-imaging market by attracting customers and business partners and to create market demand, developing a business plan and commercialisation strategy and establish agreements with key customers and early adapters in the European scientific and clinical bio-imaging market.
During the project we have reached these 4 objectives.
We have advanced our current system to a market-ready system miniaturized system. The activities that were carried out included the following:
• A new designs of the cryostat, engineering of design improvements for the system for bioimaging applications
• optimizing the overall efficiency to enable optimal live imaging
• optimizing time resolution for the highest spatial resolution
• automated cryostat control for optimized user-friendliness
The second objective regarded to the industrialization of a technology that was developed at a University. The large market potential asks for an enormous expansion of the production capacity of these systems, that were previously made on single unit basis. Therefore we have also started to increase our production capacity. We have developed and implemented the scale-up of the production line to be ready for the large-scale industrialization of the new systems.
To reach the third objective we have demonstrated the full potential of the system to over 90 potential customers, by bringing our system on the site of the potential customer, installing the system in their laboratory and helping them to perform ground-breaking new experiments with the detector system. Each demonstration lasted several months. During these demonstrations we have verified the performance of our detectors. The best results were however the fact that the potential customers were very happy with the system and they could do the planned experiments. These experiments show a clear advantage of using our system instead of existing technology. To reach the fourth objective we have implemented a marketing and commercialization strategy. Dissemination was done by attending (virtual) scientific conferences, direct visits of potential customers and writing and publishing scientific papers. To support the exploitation of our product we have also submitted two patent applications.
• A new designs of the cryostat, engineering of design improvements for the system for bioimaging applications
• optimizing the overall efficiency to enable optimal live imaging
• optimizing time resolution for the highest spatial resolution
• automated cryostat control for optimized user-friendliness
The second objective regarded to the industrialization of a technology that was developed at a University. The large market potential asks for an enormous expansion of the production capacity of these systems, that were previously made on single unit basis. Therefore we have also started to increase our production capacity. We have developed and implemented the scale-up of the production line to be ready for the large-scale industrialization of the new systems.
To reach the third objective we have demonstrated the full potential of the system to over 90 potential customers, by bringing our system on the site of the potential customer, installing the system in their laboratory and helping them to perform ground-breaking new experiments with the detector system. Each demonstration lasted several months. During these demonstrations we have verified the performance of our detectors. The best results were however the fact that the potential customers were very happy with the system and they could do the planned experiments. These experiments show a clear advantage of using our system instead of existing technology. To reach the fourth objective we have implemented a marketing and commercialization strategy. Dissemination was done by attending (virtual) scientific conferences, direct visits of potential customers and writing and publishing scientific papers. To support the exploitation of our product we have also submitted two patent applications.
As of April 2020, we have installed more than 90 detection systems, which since then have been implemented and tested for various applications. As of September 2021 the number of installed systems has increased to 150, that we expect to double within a year.
With the developments we have performed we have gone far beyond the state of the art in single-photon detection and the demonstrations that have been done during this project we made already made an impact on the following fields:
- Superresolution microscopy (STED), pioneered by Noble Prize winner and Single Quantum customer Prof. dr. Stefan Hell. It is the state of the art single-molecule fluorescence imaging technique, used to measure the concentration and flow of single molecules, for example glucose. There are a number of STED applications that profit from our detectors and the first demonstrations clearly showed this.
- Diffuse optics spectroscopy with sub-millimetre depth resolution. Chromophores in the tissue have different absorption spectra. By measuring the reflected spectra one can determine the type of tissue. Measuring absorption spectra has proven functionality for large tumour analysis and is already used during surgeries, however an unmet need is the ability of live analysis of the tissue under surgery. Current technologies only allow for slow ex-vivo analysis. Our detectors will enable fast in-vivo analysis, by time tagging the arrival of the photons one can ascribe a certain depth in the tissue. Such technology brings the third dimension to the current existing diffuse spectroscopy field. This technique can be used to image an excised tumour quickly with sufficient resolution for decision making (i.e. should the surgeon cut more tissue or not).
- Quantum key distribution and quantum computing
With the developments we have performed we have gone far beyond the state of the art in single-photon detection and the demonstrations that have been done during this project we made already made an impact on the following fields:
- Superresolution microscopy (STED), pioneered by Noble Prize winner and Single Quantum customer Prof. dr. Stefan Hell. It is the state of the art single-molecule fluorescence imaging technique, used to measure the concentration and flow of single molecules, for example glucose. There are a number of STED applications that profit from our detectors and the first demonstrations clearly showed this.
- Diffuse optics spectroscopy with sub-millimetre depth resolution. Chromophores in the tissue have different absorption spectra. By measuring the reflected spectra one can determine the type of tissue. Measuring absorption spectra has proven functionality for large tumour analysis and is already used during surgeries, however an unmet need is the ability of live analysis of the tissue under surgery. Current technologies only allow for slow ex-vivo analysis. Our detectors will enable fast in-vivo analysis, by time tagging the arrival of the photons one can ascribe a certain depth in the tissue. Such technology brings the third dimension to the current existing diffuse spectroscopy field. This technique can be used to image an excised tumour quickly with sufficient resolution for decision making (i.e. should the surgeon cut more tissue or not).
- Quantum key distribution and quantum computing