Newport acquires Femtolasers Produktions and its ultrafast laser technology
Newport (NASDAQ: NEWP; Irvine, CA) will acquire Femtolasers Produktions (Vienna, Austria), a developer and manufacturer of ultrafast laser systems used extensively in scientific and biomedical research applications. Femtolasers high precision ultrafast lasers enable advanced research applications, including the pioneering of attosecond science to study physical, chemical, and biological phenomena at the atomic and subatomic levels.
"We are excited to announce our agreement to acquire Femtolasers, which will advance our strategic initiative to extend our industry leadership in ultrafast lasers," said David Allen, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Newport's Spectra-Physics Lasers Group.
Femtolasers was spun out of the Vienna University of Technology in 1994, and has an installed base of more than 850 systems in over 30 countries. In the first 12 months after closing, Newport expects Femtolaser's sales to be in the range of $8 to $12 million, and expects the transaction to be accretive to its earnings. Terms of the transaction, which is anticipated to close during the first quarter of 2015, were not disclosed.
Femtolasers Produktions displayed two laser sources at SPIE Photonics West 2014. The company's Integral element femtosecond laser features a sealed cavity, active feedback loops, integrated diagnostics, and extreme passive stability to enable down to sub-10 fs pulses in industrial, medical, and scientific applications.Their Integral core ultrafast Ti:sapphire oscillator is a handheld unit that provides sub-2 μm axial resolution in terahertz spectroscopy, multiphoton imaging and microscopy, optical coherence tomography (OCT), time-resolved or nonlinear optics, and metrology.
In July 2011, Newport acquired ultrafast-laser maker High Q Technologies (Rankwell, Austria) for its line of picosecond and femtosecond oscillators, as well as picosecond and femtosecond oscillator/regenerative-amplifier systems; other products included optical parametric amplifiers (OPOs) and autocorrelators, which characterize ultrafast pulses.
Conard Holton
Conard Holton has 25 years of science and technology editing and writing experience. He was formerly a staff member and consultant for government agencies such as the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the International Atomic Energy Agency, and engineering companies such as Bechtel. He joined Laser Focus World in 1997 as senior editor, becoming editor in chief of WDM Solutions, which he founded in 1999. In 2003 he joined Vision Systems Design as editor in chief, while continuing as contributing editor at Laser Focus World. Conard became editor in chief of Laser Focus World in August 2011, a role in which he served through August 2018. He then served as Editor at Large for Laser Focus World and Co-Chair of the Lasers & Photonics Marketplace Seminar from August 2018 through January 2022. He received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, with additional studies at the Colorado School of Mines and Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.