Business briefs

03 Oct 2003

Including news from Cree, Osram Opto Semiconductors, Philips Electronics, Pirelli and Schott Lithotec.

•  Cree, US, has signed an agreement to sell Osram Opto Semiconductors of Germany at least 500 million LED chips over a 21-month period beginning in October 2003. The deal covers Cree's entire Opto product line, including standard, mid-brightness and XBright LED chip families as well as silicon carbide wafers.

•  Consumer electronics giant Philips Electronics has opened a EURO 20 million facility in Germany to develop components for liquid-crystal-on-silicon screen technology. The company says the Böblingen-based factory will make the first mass-produced, high-definition panels for the next generation of televisions.

•  Schott Lithotec of Germany has signed a one-year agreement to supply the International SEMATECH consortium with advanced photomask blanks for use in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography.

Meanwhile, Schott Lithotec’s US subsidiary has signed a license agreement with the US-based EUV LLC industry consortium. Under the terms of the agreement, Schott will gain access to the patents and research findings of the consortium. Both parties will now team-up to develop commercially viable EUV photomask blanks by 2006.

•  Pirelli has won a contract to supply 400 km of submarine and land fiber-optic cables that will link Kuwait City with Ganeveh in Iran. The company will manufacture the fiber at its facility in Arco Feclice, Italy, and anticipates that the link will be completed by the second quarter of 2004.

•  Spire of the US has won a $124 500 phase one grant to develop a fiber-laser-based instrument to treat glaucoma. Emitting at 2.71 microns, the company says its technology is ideal because water absorbs light at this wavelength. If the initial development is a success, the National Institutes of Health could go on to award Spire a phase two $1.2 million grant.

•  Telops, a Canadian company that designs optronic test systems, has teamed up with German test and measurement specialist ficonTEC. “ficonTEC was chosen for its expertise in complex motion control, precision mechanics and high-resolution machine vision,” said Jean Giroux, Telops’ president.