Seeing deeper into matter thanks to Phaos Technology’s microscope

The company’s OptoNano 200+ distinguishes them in this year’s SBR Technology Excellence Awards.

Industries such as electronics, biomedical research, and advanced material require powerful observation tools that allow users to see beyond microscopic levels. Traditionally, existing optical microscopes can only magnify clearly up to a 200 nm limit, but thanks to Phaos Technology’s Optical Microscopy Nanoscopy (OMN), their OptoNano 200+ becomes the world’s first optical microscope that can see beyond this limit.

Phaos discovered that by including a small glass sphere between a traditional microscope and an object, the 200 nm limit can be passed and magnification can be increased by up to four times. For this breakthrough, Phaos Technology Pte Ltd won the Nanotechnology - Semiconductor Award at the 2023 SBR Technology Excellence Awards.

The awards programme recognises the achievements and efforts of companies in Singapore to provide industry-changing products and services aided by digital capabilities, and Phaos Technology’s low-cost high-impact innovation elevates them from their competitors.

The company claims that the cost of implementing the technology is negligible compared to the value that it brings to optical microscopes, as it opens up a cheaper yet effective observation platform compared to Scanning Electron Microscopes which tend to be extremely expensive and tangled with difficult handling procedures.

The patented OMN was the result of years of advanced optical research from the National University of Singapore that was completed in 2017. After being licensed to Phaos, teams have experimented with its commercialisation and innovation into a practical product. By October 2021, OptoNano 200+ was released, becoming the most advanced optical microscope available in the market.

The OptoNano 200+ features a complete revamp of Phao’s technology to improve stability and enhance advanced observation capability. The microscope is bundled with the latest software imagery tools to allow customers to harness the full potential of the platform.

Distribution channels have been expanded across Southeast Asia, China, and Taiwan to further expose OptoNano 200+ to the market, resulting in sales increasing by over 300% in 2022. New customers taking advantage of the revolutionary technology that Phaos offers include a leading consumer electronics brand, a top-tier defence research organisation and a leading regional third-party testing company.

Phaos, with its OptoNano 200+, aim to disrupt research and development and quality assurance in key industries, especially in electronics and semiconductor, biomedical, nanotechnology, and advanced materials industries.

By allowing consumers to see beyond existing optical microscopic limits, goals to understand and develop more advanced technologies at a faster pace are much more attainable. Other opportunities include developing new image recognition technologies to improve efficiencies such as integration with computer vision and AI to detect analogies in semiconductor chips and connections, cancer detection in human samples or ensuring quality new nanotechnology advanced materials. 

The company states that the OMN technology and its commercialisation brought OptoNano 200+ into reality, turning the concept into a viable commercial product through perseverance and continuous innovation from the Phaos team. Looking towards the future, Phaos aims to further enhance and improve the performance of OMN to increase its value for its customers.

The SBR Technology Excellence Awards is presented by Singapore Business Review Magazine. To view the full list of winners, click here. If you want to join the 2024 awards programme and be acclaimed for your company's outstanding contributions in pursuit of technological innovation, please contact Jane Patiag at [email protected].