Heptagon expands Singapore facility
Heptagon (Rueschlikon, Switzerland), a manufacturer of wafer-scale micro-optics, is establishing a 20,000 sq ft manufacturing facility and regional headquarters in Singapore. This facility, which will be operational in mid-2007, is part of a wholly owned subsidiary Heptagon Micro Optics (Singapore). “Heptagon has a truly unique value proposition; glass-based wafer-scale optics that are lead-free reflow and Telcordia compatible, yet ideal for high-volume applications, which have until now only been addressable via much less robust injection-molded plastic,” said Chuck Milligan CEO.
Agilent extends optical-coating capability
Optics and optical-coating provider Agilent Technologies (Santa Clara, CA) announced the installation of a reactive magnetron thin-film optical-coating system from Leybold Optics (Alzenau, Germany). The new system will be used for coating components that require extremely precise spectral and polarization control. The high-precision HELIOS System is the first to be installed in North America. “The capabilities of the new HELIOS coating system will allow us to meet the ever-increasing demands of our customers to deliver optical components and assemblies with higher accuracy and tighter tolerances while offering reduced cost and improved repeatability,” said Vince Barich, Agilent Precision Optics operations manager.
Abiogen chooses Thermo Scientific system
Thermo Fisher Scientific (Madison, WI) announced that Abiogen Pharma (Pisa, Italy), a pharmaceutical manufacturer, chose the Thermo Scientific Antaris Fourier-transform near-infrared (FT-NIR) analytical system to perform raw materials characterization in its manufacturing facilities. With the complete Antaris FT-NIR platform fully installed, analysis of one container of raw material now takes Abiogen only two minutes at the point of raw materials receipt compared to traditional, time-consuming laboratory-based methods which take from 15 to 60 minutes to complete. Prior to using Antaris FT-NIR, Abiogen used separate methods for each raw-material container, including UV-Vis spectroscopy, IR spectroscopy, and gas chromatography. Use of multiple time-consuming methods resulted in high variable costs, including the cost of instruments, reagents and chemicals.
LINOS and Lambda partner on software
Lambda Research (Littleton, MA), a developer and supplier of optical design software, announced a new distribution partnership with LINOS Photonics (Milford, MA) in which LINOS is the new exclusive distributor of Lambda’s TracePro products in Europe and Israel. LINOS will distribute TracePro through its three sales and service operations in Europe: Goettingen, Germany, Milton Keynes, England, and Champagne au Mont d’O, France, and through its established network of representatives. TracePro is a software tool for modeling and analyzing the propagation of light in imaging and non-imaging optomechanical systems.
Optics Express and Optics Letters lead field
The Optical Society of America (OSA) announced that based on “impact factor,” or the number of citations compared to the number of papers published, its journals Optics Express andOptics Letters are the most heavily cited journals in optics. According to the 2006 Journal Citation Report-the Thomson Scientific rankings for journal citations-these two publications received the highest impact-factor rankings of all optics journals. Optics Express was the first ranked journal, followed by Optics Letters. Thomson Scientific, a business of The Thomson Corporation, announces these rankings annually, and they serve as an industry standard in gauging the notability of research published in peer-reviewed journals.
Also in the news . . .
SPIE (Bellingham, WA) retired “The International Society for Optical Engineering” as its business name and will simply be known as SPIE. . . . Customer demand for precision floor vibration-isolation systems from Technical Manufacturing (Peabody, MA) fueled its fourth building expansion in 15 years; an additional 9000 sq ft of manufacturing space brings the building to 80,000 sq ft on an 11 acre site. . . . The OSA unveiled a new design and features for its career services Web site, WorkInOptics.com, that make the site easier to use. . . . The OSA and the American Institute of Physics (College Park, MD) are partnering to develop television news segments on advances in optics and photonics in a program called “Discoveries and Breakthroughs Inside Science” (segments are on the OSA Web site). . . . The Carolinas Photonics Consortium (CPC) announced the signing of the CPC Inter-Institutional Agreement by North Carolina State University, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Western Carolina University, Clemson University, and Duke University that forms a Carolina consortium for collaborative university work aimed at the commercialization of photonics or light-based technologies.