The UK’s most prestigious award for business performance has been presented to engineering company Renishaw, for its developments made in Raman microscopy. The Queen’s Award for Enterprise 2014 was granted for the company’s flagship product, inVia Raman microscope, which allows scientists to acquire high definition 2D and 3D chemical images of very large sample areas for material analysis.
The Queen’s Award for Enterprise is presented each year by Her Majesty The Queen, on the advice of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Committee consisting of representatives of Government, industry and commerce, and the trade unions.
Dame Janet Trotter, Her Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of Gloucestershire, presented Renishaw with its seventeenth Queen’s Award on 10 November at the company’s headquarters in Gloucestershire, England.
The inVia microscopy incorporates the company's StreamLine technology, which has allowed scientists, academics and industrialists to generate chemical images rapidly, opening up new research opportunities in many fields, including biology and nanotechnology. The technology works by illuminating the sample with a line of laser light, rather than an intense spot, and collecting data from multiple points simultaneously. It then builds up an image by synchronising the sample motion on Renishaw’s high speed encoded stage (HSES) with the movement of the signal on the detector. Each imaged point of the sample traverses the laser line once. As it does so, the detector accumulates the signal and then reads it. This rapidly generates a large, artefact-free chemical image of the sample.
This technique also prevents laser induced sample damage and reduces analysis times significantly.
After being awarded with the prestigious prize, Simon Holden, the company’s chairman and chief executive, said: ‘InVia is our flagship product and the scientists and engineers who have helped design, develop and continuously innovate this product are, I hope, justifiably proud of what they have achieved. But this award also recognises significant business improvement and outstanding commercial success; success that can only be achieved by the combined efforts and commitment of everyone across all departments in the spectroscopy products division.’
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