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Business briefs

02 Apr 2007

Featuring news from Jenoptik, University of Glasgow, Lasag, Cleveland Crystals, Atomic Weapons Establishment, Southern Vision Systems, BFI Optilas, Photon Lines, Leutron Vision, Multiwave Photonics, Intense, Cornes Dodwell, Synova, Kataoka.

Jenoptik, supplier of optical components and systems, has opened a sales office in Nes Ziona, Israel, initially with two employees. The office will focus particularly on medical, security and defense applications. It will also provide local marketing support for all Jenoptik divisions, including J-Laser, J-Optik and J-Systeme.

• The University of Glasgow James Watt Nanofabrication Centre has officially opened. Centered on the Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, it will carry out interdisciplinary research at the nanometer scale and brings together research groups working in engineering and the physical and life sciences. The University has also announced more than £4 m ($7.8 m) of funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for a nanoelectrics research project. Five teams from the University, led by Iain Thayne, will collaborate on the development of transistor technologies required for future generations of integrated circuits.

Lasag of Switzerland has announced a new distribution agreement with Laser Lines, Banbury, UK, in which Laser Lines will provide sales and support for Lasag products in the UK and Ireland. Lasag's industrial Nd:YAG lasers are used in medical, electronics, automotive, aerospace and tooling applications, for precision cutting, welding and drilling.

Cleveland Crystals, producer of large aperture KDP and KD*P crystals for Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) applications, will supply crystals to the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) for use in its Orion laser system. Work on the £760,000 ($1.5 m) contract will start immediately and is scheduled to complete during 2009. The AWE has provided and maintained the warheads for the UK nuclear weapons program for over 50 years.

Southern Vision Systems have announced that BFI Optilas will become the channel to market for Southern Vision Systems' range of high-speed digital camers systems in Europe. The product range includes: GigaView, a megapixel camera with TCP/IP Gigabit Ethernet interface; MemView, a megapixel camera with USB interface; SpecterView, with on-board image processing; StreamView, which streams images at 250 fps; and TriggerView, an image-based high-speed triggering device.

Photon Lines has signed an exclusive agreement for the UK, Ireland and France to distribute Leutron Vision's CCD- and CMOS cameras, frame grabbers, embedded vision systems and related software to OEMs. Typical applications include machine vision, medicine, bio-technology and security. Leutron's PicSight range lets OEMs select and match individual sensor modules and image transfer interfaces from a range of available options prior to shipment.

Photon Lines has also signed an exclusive distribution agreement with Multiwave Photonics covering the UK and Ireland. Multiwave's range of pulsed fibre lasers using a Master Oscillator Power Amplifier architecture is launched in April 2007, available either in OEM enclosures or air-cooled rack-mountable enclosures.

Intense's portfolio of laser diodes and laser array products will be distributed in Japan by Cornes Dodwell. The diodes are offered either as arrays of individually addressable elements or as high power laser diodes, bars, and stacks. The high power products include the Hermes, Hermes Imager and HPD product families for defense, industrial, medical, and coding and marking applications.

Synova has announced a licensing agreement with Kataoka Corporation under which the Japanese laser-equipment maker will integrate Synova's Laser MicroJet technology into its laser-processing systems sold exclusively in Japan. This collaboration also includes the opening of a joint micromachining center at Kataoka's Kuze facility in Kyoto. The exclusive agreement runs for three years. Kataoka systems that incorporate Laser MicroJet technology will be identified by "Laser MicroJet inside" and "Synova-Kataoka" logos, and will be manufactured marketed, sold and serviced by Kataoka.

4D Technology has opened a new sales and support office in East Hampton, Ct, US to serve 4D's east coast and eastern US customers, as well as key customers throughout the eastern United States. Don Roberts will be heading the new office. 4D Technology develops and manufactures optical metrology instruments for applications in astronomy, aerospace, data storage, semiconductors and other industries.

Fiber news

Finisar has agreed to acquire all of the outstanding equity interests in AZNA, based in Wilmington, Ma, US, and Kodeos Communications, South Plainfield, NJ, US. The acquisitions are expected to be completed by April 5, 2007, and broaden Finisar's telecom product lines while adding technologies for advanced modulation and electronic signal processing.

CoreOptics has demonstrated the feasibility of 100 Gbit/s transmission. Ten channels of 111 Gbit/s at 50 GHz channel spacing were transmitted over 2400 kilometers of standard single mode fiber, in a project developed jointly with the Eindhoven University of Technology. The trial opens up the prospect of 100 Gbit/s transmission over current 10 Gbit/s network infrastructure.

Ekinops has opened a North American customer support center in Dallas. It will offer support to assist the company's service providers and enterprise customers in the US, Canada, and North and Central America. The new center also serves all of Ekinops' customers outside of Europe. It is the company's second support center for optical transport, DWDM, CWDM and aggregation equipment, the first being located at its headquarters in Lannion, France. In the US Ekinops has existing offices in California and the North East.

• The global consumption value of optical add-drop multiplexors (OADMs) will accelerate from $371 million in 2005 and $483 million in 2006 to $2.38 billion in 2015, according to a new forecast from ElectroniCast Consultants. Fixed configuration OADMs will maintain the consumption value lead with their 82 percent value share shrinking to a 53 percent share, $1.35 billion, by 2015. "OADMs incorporate a variety of optoelectronic and passive optical components," said Jeff Montgomery, president of Electronicast. "As the capacity and complexity of OADMs expand greatly over the next decade, and as the deployment quantity rises, the related component value correspondingly will climb." The global consumption of OADM components in 2005 is estimated at $69.2 million and $102 milllion in 2006. This will rise rapidly to $831 million in 2015. The 10 year forecast OADM Components Global Consumption Value Trends is available immediately.

People

Infinera's Richard Schneider has been honored by the Optical Society of America with elevation to the rank of Fellow, in recognition of his achievements in the development of Infinera's large-scale photonic integrated circuits (PICs). Schneider becomes the fourth OSA Fellow at Infinera, along with Radha Nagarajan, Charles Joyner and David Welch. Schneider has authored or co-authored nearly 80 publications in refereed journals and 2 invited book chapters, and is co-inventor on 20 patents.

SPECTROGON ABUniverse Kogaku America Inc.Omicron-Laserage Laserprodukte GmbHIDS Imaging Development SystemsCHROMA TECHNOLOGY CORP.Hyperion OpticsOptikos Corporation
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