Secure transponder will serve military
Boston Micromachines (Watertown, MA), a provider of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based deformable-mirror products for adaptive-optics systems, has been selected by the U.S. Army for a Phase II Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR) award through the Department of Defense. The STTR award of approximately $750,000 will allow Boston Micromachines and its research partner Boston University to advance the development of its Secure Communicating Optical Ultra-small Transponder (SCOUT) that will help save lives on the battlefield through secure optical communication using an active mirror enabling the rapid identification of friendly soldiers, vehicles, or aircraft.
STED-microscope grant awarded to UCLA
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $1.1 million Major Research Instrumentation grant for the Advanced Light Microscopy core laboratory at the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). The award will facilitate the acquisition of the first commercially available super-resolution stimulated emission depletion (STED) confocal laser-scanning microscope for nanoscopic resolution of biological samples. Developed by Leica Microsystems, the microscope is designed for nanoscopic resolution of biological and artificial samples. Despite using regular lenses and visible light, the microscope is not limited by diffraction and displays a 10× resolution improvement over conventional light microscopes.
Awards showcase holography technology
Sponsored by industry newsletter Holography News (www.holographynews.info), this year’s 15th International Hologram Manufacturers Association’s (IHMA; www.ihma.org) Excellence in Holography Awards 2007 were presented at the annual holography industry conference Holo-pack·Holo-print in Hong Kong.
The best New Holographic Product award went to Bayer Innovation for its PhenoStor holographic card data-storage system that records optically encrypted data holographically on a photopolymer developed by Bayer. In the U.K., Hampshire-based Eskay Holographics and Manchester’s Henderson Engineering scooped the award for Best New Holographic Technique for its HSK 310H machine that embosses holographic images onto narrow-web films used for packaging and security applications. And this year’s coveted Brian Monaghan Award for Business Innovation went to Hologram Industries’ founder and president Hugues Souparis for his personal contribution to and influence on the development of the hologram industry.
Grant will fund silicon photonics research
The U.K.’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) awarded a grant valued at about $10 million for silicon research to a consortium led by the University of Surrey (Surrey, England). The consortium, headed by Graham Reed and Goran Mashanovich of the University’s Advanced Technology Institute includes researchers from St. Andrews University (led by Thomas Krauss), Leeds University (Robert Kelsall), Warwick University (David Leadley), Southampton University (Graham Ensell), the British defense research organization QinetiQ (Mike Jenkins), and Intel (Mario Paniccia).
For more business news visit www.optoelectronicsreport.com.
Also in the news . . .
Edmund Optics (EO; Barrington, NJ), provider of optical components and tools, received an Energy Saver Plant award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for reducing its energy use and shrinking its carbon footprint, placing it among the top third of U.S. companies in the program. . . . Dominar (Santa Clara, CA), a designer and manufacturer of optical coatings, has completed acquisition of glass-maker Ellis Optical Technologies. . . . A new technical market research report from BCC Research (Wellesley, MA), Photonic Crystals: Technology and Global Markets, estimates that the global market for photonic crystals will be worth $13.9 million in 2007. . . . Rubicon Technology (Franklin Park, IL), an electronic materials provider that develops, manufactures, and sells monocrystalline sapphire and other crystalline products, announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 6.7 million shares of its common stock at a price of $14 per share. . . . S.E.T., (former SUSS MicroTec Device Bonder Division; Saint-Jeoire, France), a supplier of semiconductor wafer bonding and nanoimprint lithography solutions, announced that the partnership between S.E.T. and CEA Leti (a laboratory of the Minatec Innovation Center in Grenoble, France) has resulted in a new-generation, high-accuracy (0.5 µm), high-force (4000 N) device bonder for wafer diameters up to 300 mm. . . . Avantes (Eerbeek, The Netherlands) is now offering three preconfigured spectrometer instruments as stock items.