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Business briefs

23 Dec 2005

Including news from Lumics, Optical Surfaces, 3M and Corning and more.

•   3M has announced plans to build an LCD optical-film manufacturing facility in Poland. The films are used to make LCD TVs brighter and maintain their picture quality in conditions ranging from natural daylight to darkened rooms. The company intends to purchase a piece of land in Wroclaw near its existing manufacturing operation.

•   Lumics, the German maker of laser diode modules, has raised EURO 5.5 million in its latest funding round. The firm plans to use the proceeds to increase production capacity, develop its laser diode technology and expand its sales activities.

•   Optical Surfaces of the UK is supplying two high precision mirrors to the Central Laser Facility at Rutherford Appleton Laboratories as part of the Astra Gemini project. The two off-axis parabolic mirrors will be 175 mm in diameter and will help increase the intensity of the existing Astra laser by three order of magnitude from 1019 W/cm2 in a single beam to 1022 W/cm2 in each of two beams.

•   Corning, US, says it has now received all the necessary government certificates to begin shipping active matrix LCD glass substrates from its Taichung manufacturing facility in Taiwan. Having recently approved a third-phase of expansion for Taichung at a cost of $425 million, Corning says the facility will ultimately manufacture generation 5.5, 6 and 7 glass substrates.

•   A judge for the US District Court for the District of Delaware has upheld the decision the Alcon Manufacturing and Alcon Laboratories wilfully infringed two patents held by fellow US firm Advanced Medical Optics (AMO). The judge awarded AMO $213.9 million in damages saying that "the jury was presented with clear and convincing evidence that Alcon intentionally copied" two patents relating to equipment used in cataract surgery.

•   Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation of Japan says it has developed a highly-efficiency blue phosphorescent OLED material. The company says the OLED material has a current efficiency of 30 cd/A at an intensity of 100 cd/m2 and has an external quantum efficiency of 13%.

•   Plastic Logic, UK, has announced the final closing of its series C funding. Thanks to an investment by US-based venture capital firm Oak Investment Partners, the round reached $28 million. "The funding will accelerate out move to commercial trials of prototype products and to finalise our manufacturing process for transfer to mass production," said Stuart Evans, Plastic Logic's CEO.

LaCroix Precision OpticsUniverse Kogaku America Inc.Hyperion OpticsHÜBNER PhotonicsOmicron-Laserage Laserprodukte GmbHMad City Labs, Inc.Iridian Spectral Technologies
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