New laser company opens while another closes

17 Jun 2002

Laser Ionics (Orlando, FL) has closed after 30 years of business due to low sales and declining interest in the company's core technology--ion-laser systems.

Meanwhile, PicoQuanT (Berlin, Germany) an optoelectronic research and development company, opened its doors in August. Several founders of the new company are from the former photonics division of the now-bankrupt BiosQuant. The firm will develop products for medical applications of lasers, time-resolved fluorometry, and ultrahigh-frequency electronics. The company will begin marketing one of its first products, a picosecond diode laser, within two months. The laser will produce 50-300-ps pulses at up to 80-MHz repetition rates; models will produce from 635 to 910 nm.