Business briefs

05 Oct 2006

Including news from Verizon, Strategies Unlimited, Toshiba, Sabeus, CVI Laser, Northrop Grumman, Zygo, Cascade Technologies and others.

• Verizon Communications has announced further financial and operational details on the most advanced broadband network currently being deployed in America. The company plans to pass 18 million premises with its new fiber network by the end of 2010, or more than 50% of the approximately 33 million households in the company's 28-state wireline service area. The FiOS network build-out is on target to pass a total of 6 million premises by year-end 2006.

• Strategies Unlimited's recent report Substrates for GaN-Based Devices: Performance Comparisons and Market Assessment forecasts that increasing demand for blue-violet laser diodes, UV LEDs and high-power, high-frequency electronics will provide significant opportunities for GaN and aluminum nitride. Companies named as ready to provide such substrates include Sumitomo Electric, Cree and Samsung Corning, as well as startups such as Crystal IS, Fox Group, Kyma, Lumilog, TDI and TopGaN. Global demand for substrates for GaN devices is forecast to grow from $340 million in 2006 to $880 million in 2010.

• Toshiba's Storage Device Division (SDD) has announced the "world's first" HD DVD writer for integration into mobile PCs, enabling notebook PC users to write high-definition video content, while enjoying backward compatibility with all DVD and CD formats. The 12.7 mm-high SD-L902A integrates a blue-violet laser diode to read and write HD DVD-R discs.

• Ionatron has received a revised US government contract for development of its Laser Induced Plasma Channel technology. The modification involves an increase in funding of $1.9 million, making the total value $3.4 million.

• Sabeus has launched the AG-1 distributed feedback laser, which implements the company's patent-pending Multi Variable Control System for dynamic signal feedback. MVCS allows the AG-1 to achieve 100 times the signal precision of comparable semiconductor diode lasers.

• CVI Technical Optics has completed the integration of Quality Laser Optics (QLO), which it acquired in April 2006. The QLO business, all staff, and the equipment in Ballasalla were re-located into CVI's nearby facility in Onchan, Isle of Man. CVI-TO further announces the appointment of Gary Thomas to the position of Business Development Manager for Large Optics.

• The Microscopy Group of Carl Zeiss has granted the firm LaVision BioTec, Bielefeld, Germany, licences on several patents, backdated to August 2005. These patents protect the use of ultra-short laser pulses in the femtosecond range for multiphoton fluorescence excitation in laser scanning microscopy.

• Northrop Grumman has won a $79 million contract from the US Army to provide 300 of the company's Lightweight Laser Designator Rangefinder (LLDR) systems that provide targeting capability for laser-guided, GPS-guided and conventional munitions. The system can recognize targets, find the range to a target with an eye-safe wavelength and calculate grid coordinates.

• New Wave Research has been awarded a Phase II SBIR contract from the US Department of Energy to develop a next-generation UV femtosecond laser-ablation mass-spectrometry system. It is destined for the DOE's Nuclear and Radiological National Security Program.

• Photonic Products has launched a 25 mW version of its 405 nm blue-violet Photon laser diode modules with TTL modulation. The 25 mW output power offered by the module provides higher energy density with a significantly higher signal to noise ratio and consequently greater accuracy and sensitivity for biomedical and biochemical analysis.

• Zygo has this week received $6.8 million of contracts for delivery of laser damage-tolerant high precision optics. In its first quarter of fiscal 2007, Zygo has booked $1.9 million of the contracts which are scheduled for delivery over the next 12 months. Zygo's Display Solutions Division has received an order of $1.4 million for its DropShot Flat Panel Metrology system designed to operate with the latest OLED and LCD ink jet printing technologies to analyze product quality.

• Teem Photonics has sold its range of PLC power-splitter modules to Gould Technology. The transaction includes an agreement in which Gould Technology can use Teem Photonics' ion-exchange waveguide splitter chips inside the PLC splitter modules. The PLC power-splitter product line is differentiated by its low insertion loss and polarization-dependent loss as well as its high port-to-port uniformity.

• Flir Systems has been awarded a $25.5 million contract from the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command for its Star SafireIII stabilized multi-sensor systems. The units will support the US Army's RAID program. Work will be performed in Flir's Portland, Oregon production facility.

• Quantum cascade laser specialist Cascade Technologies has signed a licensing deal with Lucent Technologies. The lasers, utilised by Cascade in its products, were first developed and patented by Lucent in its laboratories in the USA back in 1994.