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Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2005

Daily News Briefs
Military contractor BAE Systems has been awarded a modification worth a minimum of $122.3 million for the transition effort for two armed robotic vehicle (ARV) versions for the US Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS), increasing the contract from $189 million to $311.3 million. The ARV, which is to be about the size of a large pickup truck, is the largest unmanned ground vehicle in the Army's FCS program. It will be deployable either two at a time on C-130 airplanes or individually with CH-47 helicopters. The ARV is intended to provide reconnaissance, surveillance, target acquisition and assault firepower to battlefield commanders; BAE is scheduled to field the first prototypes in 2010.
 

Jmar Making Sensors
for Environmental Monitoring
SAN DIEGO, Aug. 17 -- Jmar Technologies Inc., a developer of laser-based equipment for imaging, analysis and fabrication at the nanoscale, has received purchase orders for three READ (reversal electron attachment detection) units from FemtoTrace Inc. of Pomona, Calif. In partnership with FemtoTrace, Jmar is engineering and manufacturing three advanced chemical detection units based on FemtoTrace's READ technology for FemtoTrace customers.
   Two major utilities, one in the US and one in the UK, will use the READ units for on-site, real-time environmental applications. The READ instruments will be used to detect the presence of dangerous polychlorobiphenyls (PCBs), with the goal of protecting the environment. READ will also be used for locating underground dielectric oil leaks using environmentally friendly perfluorocarbon tracers (PFTs). The sensors can also be used for homeland security and utility infrastructure applications.
   Under the previously announced contract, clearance for delivery of these beta units was subject to completion of two alpha units. Although not delivered to FemtoTrace at the time of this new order, the alpha units had gone through sufficient testing for FemtoTrace to release the beta orders to Jmar.
   The purchase orders expand the original agreement between FemtoTrace and Jmar, announced in March 2003, from two Beta units to three, the third of which will be used for demonstrating and validating the capabilities of READ in a critical infrastructure security application. The three units will be built as a preproduction run at a total price exceeding $900,000, and are scheduled for phased delivery in the fourth quarter of 2005 and the first quarter of 2006.
   For more information, visit: www.jmar.com
 

Picolight Round Nets $14.5M
LOUISVILLE, Colo., Aug. 17 --Picolight Inc., a Colorado-based maker of optical components and vertical cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL)-based optical transceivers, announced today it has completed a $27.5 million funding effort with the addition of $14.5 million in a combination of new equity investment and debt financing.
   Growth Capital, a new investor, completed the second close with a $7 million equity investment and was joined by Orix Venture Finance LLC, which provided an additional $7.5 million in debt financing. Investor Growth Capital joins previous investors BA Venture Partners, Vesbridge Partners and Coral Capital Management, which invested a total of $13 million in the first round.
   Picolight said it will use the new financing to expand its operations, scale its manufacturing process and extend its 1310-nm VCSEL products from 4-Gigabit fiber channel to 10 Gigabit Ethernet at long reach over single-mode fiber.
   Picolight's products are used in high-bandwidth optical systems in data center, enterprise, storage area and metro networking markets.
   For more information, visit: www.picolight.com

 

Photonics Gets Billing in New Law
WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 -- The Optical Society of America (OSA) said the language in a bill signed by President Bush on Aug. 10 will keep photonics at the forefront of federal policy.
   The new law, the "Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users" (HR 3, section 5310, subsection 3) authorizes funds for federal highways, highway safety programs and transit programs for fiscal years 2005-2009. It defines an intelligent transportation system as "electronics, photonics, communications or information processing used singly or in combination to improve the efficiency or safety of a surface transportation system."
   Sens. Christopher Bond (R-MO) and James Inhofe (R-OK) and Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) were conferees on the bill and were largely responsible for the inclusion of the word "photonics," OSA said.
   "Congress and the administration clearly recognize the importance of the contributions of optics and photonics to transportation needs," said Elizabeth A. Rogan, executive director of the OSA.
   For more information, visit: www.osa.org

 

NSF, SIA Join Forces for
Nanoelectronic Research Exploration
SAN JOSE, Calif., Aug. 17 -- The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI), a consortium of members of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), have agreed to jointly fund a national university-based research program focused on long-term nanoelectronics exploration.
   NSF and NRI will each contribute $1 million to support research they say has the goal of sustaining US leadership in the global semiconductor industry. The six NRI industrial participants contributing funding are AMD, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Intel, Micron Technology and Texas Instruments. This agreement represents the first step as part of the NRI, announced last November by SIA, aimed at the acceleration of nanoelectronics research in universities. NRI will be administered on behalf of the industrial participants by the Nanoelectronics Research Corp., a subsidiary of the Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC), a university research management consortium.
   "The global semiconductor industry is facing a critical technology transition over the next 10 to 15 years," said SIA President George Scalise. "The technology leaders of 2020 will be determined by actions taken today. The incubation period for new technologies is typically 15 years, making it essential for us to support basic research on nanoelectronics today."
   The NRI will explore, both independently and in conjunction with government organizations, new approaches in emerging areas of electronics and other quantum variables (e.g., spin, phase, etc.) at the nanoscale level, aimed at discovering new devices that will work with industry-standard CMOS in the year 2020 and beyond. Paolo Gargini of Intel and Hans Stork of Texas Instruments will head the governing council overseeing NRI's efforts as chairman and vice chairman, respectively. Hans Coufal of IBM will lead the NRI Technical Program Group. Other governing council members are: Craig Sander (AMD), Betsy Weitzman (Freescale), John Warlaumount (IBM) and Mark Durcan (Micron).
   Coordination with SIA and SRC will be the responsibility of SIA's Pushkar Apte and SRC's Larry Sumney. "For the first time, the US government and the US semiconductor industry are collaborating on long-term research on nanoelectronics," noted Gargini. "This is a very big deal over some very small structures. With these tiny nanotransistors -- 10 nm in size -- we will be able to build 10 billion transistors in the space of a period made by a ballpoint pen."
   For more information, visit: www.sia-online.org
 
Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2005

Daily News Briefs
Argon ST Inc. announced that it has been awarded a $9.4 million contract by the US government for communications equipment. Headquartered in Fairfax, Va., Argon manufactures systems and sensors for the command and control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance markets.    . . .    Candela Corp. of Wayland, Mass., a provider of clinical solutions to medical practitioners who treat cosmetic and medical conditions with lasers, laser systems and other technologies, has signed an exclusive three-year agreement with McKesson Medical-Surgical Inc., a US distributor to family and general practice medical specialists, for distribution of the company's full aesthetic laser and light-based products. Effective Nov. 1, McKesson will distribute products used for hair removal, skin rejuvenation, tattoo removal, vascular lesions and acne treatments.    . . .    Ocean Optics, a Dunedin, Fla., maker of optical sensing systems for research, development and OEM markets, said it has appointed two new European distributors: Kutay Laboratory Equipment in Turkey, and LAO Industrial Systems in the Czech Republic. Kutay is a supplier of laboratory instruments; LAO sells laser systems and optoelectronic and measuring equipment for scientific research, educational and commercial applications.    . . .    Nanorex, a molecular engineering software company based in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., named K. Eric Drexler as the company's chief technical advisor. The company says Drexler will play a leading role in shaping its product strategy and advancing its academic outreach programs. Drexler, an author and founder of nonprofit think tank the Foresight Nanotech Institute, is often described as the "father of nanotechnology."
 

APL Mineral Mapper Heads to Mars
BALTIMORE, Md., Aug. 16 -- With the recent launch of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars -- or CRISM -- joins the set of high-tech detectives seeking traces of water on the red planet.
   Built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., CRISM is the first visible-infrared spectrometer to fly on a NASA Mars mission. Its primary job is to look for the residue of minerals that form in the presence of water -- the "fingerprints" left by evaporated hot springs, thermal vents, lakes or ponds on Mars when water could have existed on the surface.
   With unprecedented clarity, CRISM will map areas on the Martian surface down to house-sized scales -- as small as 60 feet across -- when the spacecraft is in its average orbit altitude of about 190 miles.
   Peering through a telescope with a 4-in. aperture, and with a greater capability to map spectral variations than any similar instrument sent to another planet, CRISM will read 544 "colors" in reflected sunlight to detect minerals in the surface. Its highest resolution is about 20 times sharper than any previous look at Mars in infrared wavelengths.
   CRISM is mounted on a gimbal, allowing it to follow targets on the surface as the orbiter passes overhead. It will spend the first half of a two-year orbit mission mapping Mars at 650-ft. scales, searching for potential study areas. Several thousand promising sites will then be measured in detail at CRISM's highest spatial and spectral resolution. CRISM will also monitor seasonal variations in dust and ice particles in the atmosphere, supplementing data gathered by the orbiter's other instruments and providing new clues about the Martian climate.
   As the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter cruises to its destination, the CRISM operations team continues to fine-tune the software and systems it will use to command the instrument and receive, read, process and store a wealth of data from orbit -- more than 10 terabytes when processed back on Earth, enough to fill more than 15,000 compact discs. The spacecraft is set to reach Mars next March, use aerobraking to circularize its orbit, and to settle into its science orbit by November 2006.
   For more information, visit: crism.jhuapl.edu

 

e2v Sensors on Board Orbiter
CHELMSFORD, England, Aug. 16 -- Sensors from e2v technologies will capture images of unprecedented resolution and volume via the HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) telescopic camera on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The telescope will be used in particular to look for clues on the planet's water and ice history.
   The HiRISE combines very high resolution and signal-to-noise ratio with a large swath width. This will enable the e2v image sensors incorporated into the HiRISE camera to capture images of selected swaths of the surface of Mars at scales as little as one meter.
   The HiRISE Operations Center (HiROC) at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory is responsible for the majority of the ground data system work for the HiRISE instrument. Observation planning, uplink, downlink, data processing and instrument monitoring will all be done through HiROC. Developers of HiRISE, also known as "the people's camera," encourage public viewing/analysis of HiRISE images and submission of observation requests. (For information on participating, visit: marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/HiRISE/)
   e2v has supplied a total of fifty CCD image sensors to Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. for the Mars probe, 25 of which were flight models. Ball Aerospace arranged the 2048 x 128 x 12-micron pixel TDI (time delay integrated) back-illuminated devices to form a long imager and to generate the high swath width required.
   About 2 percent of the surface of Mars will be mapped during the mission's four-year polar orbital mission. At an altitude of 255 kilometres, information will be gathered and analyzed to determine whether the current cold and dry planet used to be warmer and wetter, possibly providing a habitat for life forms at one time. The detailed reconnaissance will also enable NASA to identify suitable landing zones for future planned robotic explorers; NASA scientists also hope to establish whether the planet could support human outposts.
   For more information, visit: imaging.e2v.com

 
Monday, Aug. 15, 2005

Daily News Briefs
Ann Arbor, Mich., -based Kaiser Optical Systems Inc., a maker of volume phase holographic (VPH) diffraction gratings, announced that it has developed a proprietary high throughput (HT) process for VPH gratings for telecommunications and other industries which the company says will enable customers to design more compact, efficient and better performing systems. The gratings can be used for reconfigurable add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs) and wavelength selective switches as well as for multiplexers/demultiplexers, optical spectrum analyzers, optical channel monitors and tunable lasers.    . . .    Electronic Sensor Technology Inc., a provider of homeland security solutions based in Newbury Park, Calif., has appointed Beijing R&D Technology, based in China, as its exclusive distributor for zNose in that country. The zNose is an electronic sensor device that the company says can capture and analyze nearly any odor, fragrance or chemical vapor within 10 seconds. To date, Beijing R&D has placed five orders for the product for environmental and homeland security applications.    . . .    Precision Photonics Corp., a Boulder, Colo., -based manufacturer of optics with 1-nm tolerances for use in semiconductor manufacturing and the telecommunications, aerospace and biomedical fields, has received certification for the ISO 9001:2000 quality standard for its optical components and laser instrumentation. . . .    VisEn Medical, a developer of optical molecular imaging, today announced that Ed Kania, managing partner and chairman of Flagship Ventures, a venture capital firm, has joined its board of directors. Both companies are located in Cambridge, Mass. VisEn also announced that it has raised $4 million of additional venture capital financing, which it intends to use to support the commercial launch of its initial products later this year, and to develop additional applications of its technologies. VisEn's core technology platforms are designed to harness the power of optical imaging in vivo. The company's fluorescent molecular tomography system and optical probe portfolio use near infrared light to produce molecular maps of disease activities deep within the body and have applications in the areas of oncology, inflammation and cardiovascular disease in small animals used in research and preclinical studies.
 

Agilent to Sell Chip Unit and Lumileds
PALO ALTO, Calif., Aug. 15 -- Agilent Technologies Inc., a maker of electronic test and measurement products, announced today it will sell its Semiconductor Products segment to buyout companies Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Silver Lake Partners for $2.66 billion, as part of a restructuring plan that will result in the loss of 1300 jobs.
   Agilent also said it has agreed sell its San Jose, Calif.-based lighting company Lumileds to Royal Philips Electronics for $950 million plus $50 million in debt and that it will spin off its SOC (system on a chip) and memory test businesses. The deal will give Amsterdam-based Philips a controlling stake of 96.5 percent of Lumileds; Lumileds employees will own the remaining 3.5 percent.
   Agilent said it will return the cash proceeds of the divestitures to its owners through a $4 billion share repurchase program. It said the divestitures will be completed by the end of October, subject to closing conditions, including governmental and regulatory approvals.
   Bill Sullivan, president and CEO of Agilent, told investors and press this morning that the moves will enable it to focus solely on the measurement market, in both the electronic and bioanalytical areas. Lumileds, a joint venture Agilent formed with Philips after Agilent's spinoff from HP (Hewlett-Packard) in 1999, has been an "exceedingly successful in developing solid state alternatives to the lighting market," Sullivan said. "This move is very strategic to Philips, and it's the right time to be able to put that back together under Philips."
   Sullivan said it plans to cut its global infrastructure costs by $450 million, and that the job cuts will be accomplished through a combination of employee transfers to the divestiture and of spinoff, attrition and work force reduction. It said it expects the restructuring to be completed by the middle of its 2006 fiscal year, and the roughly $200 million implementation cost to be offset by the proceeds of property and other asset sales as the company reduces its global footprint.
   For more information, visit: www.agilent.com

 
Friday, Aug. 12, 2005

Daily News Briefs
Cree Inc., a Durham, N.C., maker of semiconductor materials, including LEDs, announced today that Cynthia B. Merrell, its CFO and treasurer since 1998, has resigned. Cree said the resignation will be effective when a successor takes office but no later than mid-February.    . . .    Photop Technologies Inc., a manufacturer of fiber optics, projection and display optics, laser, crystal material and photonics products, announced that its variable optical attenuator (VOA) was selected into China's National Key New Product Project. Applications for the VOA include signal power management in optical networks, dynamic optical power control and channel equalization in add/drop multiplexers.
 

National Science Foundation Funds
Three Chemical Bonding Centers
ARLINGTON, Va., Aug. 12 -- The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that it will fund a new group of chemical bonding centers (CBCs), or multifaceted research teams. The three new centers will be based at the California Institute of Technology, Columbia University and the University of California, Irvine (UCI). Respectively, they hope to find new and more economical ways of storing solar energy, to illuminate the inner workings of molecules and to create new kinds of nanoscale molecular machines for drug delivery and other applications.
   CBC awards are funded through NSF's division of chemistry. Each award provides $1.5 million to the center over a three-year period. At the end of that time, those centers showing high potential will be eligible to continue their work with a Phase II award, which will provide $2 million to $3 million per year for up to five years. These awards are also potentially renewable for an additional five years.
The type of DNA-based walker to be explored at the new CBC for molecular cybenetics. All the various DNA strands involved in its operation are synthesized artificially. Rising in a vertical double helix are the orange and black strands that form the body and legs of the walker itself. Along the bottom is the multicolored spiral of a DNA-based "track," which also carries a series of green, purple, red and blue "attachment" strands. The motion of the walker is powered by two types of free-floating "fuel" strands, colored yellow and pink, which alternately come in, intertwine with the appropriate leg and attachment strand, and then detach to allow the walker to take the next stride.(Illustration: Niles A. Pierce, California Institute of Technology)
Caltech chemist Harry B. Gray and his colleagues from Caltech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will pursue efficient, economical ways to store solar energy in the form of chemical bonds--an advance that is critical for using sunlight as a renewable source of fuel and chemical feedstocks -- at their new chemical bonding center. The researchers will focus on getting sunlight to split water into its higher energy building blocks, hydrogen and oxygen. They will also work to raise public awareness about the importance of renewable energy and the scientific challenges required to address it.
   The new CBC for molecular cybernetics, headed by Columbia's Milan N. Stojanovic, will have eight principal investigators from seven institutions: Columbia, Boston University, Caltech, the universities of Michigan, Chicago and New Mexico and the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. The center's goal will be to produce synthetic molecular machines powered by chemical bond transformation. To achieve this, the researchers will synthesize chemical structures having two or more protruding appendages of DNA, each able to grab onto or let go of a surface in response to an external stimulus. This should allow the structure to move across the surface like a molecular "spider." If successful, the construction of such autonomously moving molecules would generate considerable scientific and public interest, and could lead to applications in areas such as drug delivery and nanopatterning.
   The goal of UCI chemist Shaul Mukamel at his CBC is to get a better understanding of the inner workings of molecules. Mukamel will head a team of researchers from Irvine and the University of California, Santa Barbara. Using both theory and experiment, they will probe the real-time inner workings of molecules at single-atom resolution, with the goal of illuminating elementary chemical events such as the gain and loss of an electron from a single molecule, the making and breaking of chemical bonds and the transport of charge among molecules. Ultimately, these investigations should lead to real-space, real-time pictures of chemical processes at the most fundamental level -- in effect, time-lapse sequences of chemical events as they occur.
   For more information, visit: www.nsf.gov
 

Essex Launches Products Group
COLUMBIA, Md., Aug. 12 -- Essex Corp. announced the creation of its Commercial Products Group (CPG), to focus on providing government and commercial markets with the products that Essex has patented in the areas of optical processors, optical communications, radar and image processing, cognitive computing and signals acquisition and analysis. The first business unit in the CPG is the commercial communication products division (CCPD), which will focus on providing telecommunication product solutions.
   In July, CCPD received its first contract for the development of a prototype fiber optic transceiver. Completion of the prototype is scheduled for fall 2005; CCPD will be demonstrating it at the European Conference on Optical Communications in Glasgow, Scotland, September 25-29.
   The CPG will operate in Columbia, Md. and Melbourne, Fla., and will initially be headed by acting General Manager Ed Jaehne, who is also Essex vice president and chief strategy officer. Mark Koontz, formerly of Harris Corp., has been appointed as vice president in charge of the Melbourne, Fla.,-based CCPD business unit, and as assistant general manager of the CPG.
   For more information, visit: www.essexcorp.com
 
Thursday, Aug. 11, 2005

Daily News Briefs
Melles Griot, a supplier of photonics products, is using its new QED Subaperture Stitching Interferometer (SSI) to provide precise interferometric measurements of large clear aperture and high numerical aperture surfaces. The SSI will work in conjunction with a magnetorheological finishing system located in a class-10,000 cleanroom to produce the optical elements. The company expects the move to significantly increase the surface accuracy of the optical elements produced at its Melles Griot Optics Group facility.    . . .    RoseStreet Labs (RSL), a supplier of products and services for wireless infrastructure and sensors in the life science, renewable energy and homeland security markets, announced the opening of its 3-D research and development laboratory for semiconductor packaging. RoseStreet Labs and its subsidiary, FlipChip International, known for its flip chip and wafer level packaging product lines, are located in Phoenix, Ariz. RSL also announced an alliance with Suss MicroTec, with the company's full suite of lithography and 3-D packaging equipment selected for RoseStreet's laboratory.
 

OmniVision CameraChips
Give Mars Spacecraft Sight
SUNNYVALE, Calif., August 11 -- OmniVision Technologies Inc., a supplier of CMOS image sensors, announced that it is collaborating with NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of Pasadena, Calif., to supply image sensors for the Picosat and Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Systems Engineering (PAUSE) Mars prototype aerobot project. OmniVision also announced that it is supporting the Angstrom Aerospace Corp. (AAC) in Uppsala, Sweden, with imagers for the first microelectromechanical systems- (MEMS) enabled nanosatellite, the MicroLink Nanosatellite project.
   As part of the PAUSE Mars aerobot project, OmniVision will supply CameraChips to be used in the imaging systems onboard. PAUSE aerobots are unmanned scientific exploration vehicles (airborne robots) designed to float like balloons for up to several months in the atmosphere of planets and moons, and are equipped to conduct sophisticated observational programs.
A polyethylene balloon gets ready to be launched into the stratosphere by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology as part of the PAUSE Mars prototype aerobot project. The initial test program was conducted at the facilities of GSSL Inc., a balloon manufacturer in Tillamook, Ore. (Photo GSSL Inc.)
PAUSE aerobots consist of a zero-pressure balloon and a prototype Mars aerobot science microgondola, which includes three OmniVision imagers, multiple temperature sensors, a pressure sensor, a GPS receiver, a 1 GB data storage device and a radio modem. The OmniVision sensors will be used to take images down, to the side and up. The gondola weighs 7.25 lbs and consumes approximately 3 watts of power. The aerobot was recently deployed twice in the Earth's stratosphere at 35 km (21.9 mi.) to simulate the environment on Mars.
   MicroLink-1 (formerly called NanoSpace-1), the first nanosatellite (<10 kg), is a new breed of small spacecraft consisting largely of enabling micro- and nanotechnologies. In the upcoming MicroLink space mission, a microsatellite and a nanosatellite are launched jointly; once in orbit the two are separated.
   Onboard the spacecraft, OmniVision sensors will be used to take images of Earth and to monitor the satellite separation. The sensors will be packaged into ultraminiaturized MultiChip-Modules. MicroLink-1, currently under development at the AAC, is expected to be launched in 2009.
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