Business briefs
17 Jun 2002
Including news from IQE, Corning, Cambridge Display Technologies and Strategies Unlimited.
IQE, a UK-based supplier of epitaxial wafers to the semiconductor industry, has reported third quarter sales of GBP 8.2 million, an increase of 28% year-on-year. Over the third quarter, IQE increased investment in R&D to GBP 1.6 million supporting new development programs to take advantage of the eventual recovery in its key markets.
IQE has also teamed up with
Motorola to produce what they claim are the world's first 12 inch GaAs-on-Si wafers enables light-emitting semiconductors to be combined with silicon-integrated circuits on a single chip.
US-based analyst
Strategies Unlimited has published a report that claims the telecoms downturn has severely delayed the market for tunable lasers. "The market for these devices is expected to reach USD 1 billion by 2005, but for the near term the market has stalled," said a company spokesperson.
Alpine Research Optics (ARO), a supplier of high performance coated laser optics, has bought a five-acre site in Colorado, US. David Collier, president of ARO said: "We believe that the market for high performance coated optics will continue to grow, particularly in the deep ultraviolet. This purpose-built facility will enable us to develop UV optics in much higher volumes."
Fiber-optic giant
Corning is set to open a pilot furnace in its South Carolina, US, manufacturing facility. High transmission fused silica glass will be produced for use in microlithography applications such as integrated circuits.
Corning will also supply high-quality fused silica optics to the
national ignition facility (NIF) at
Laurence Livermore national laboratory. NIF uses a 192-beam laser to create extreme temperature and pressure conditions. Once installed, the finished optics will focus laser light, spread the intensity of the beam, and perform final focusing.
UK-based
Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) has agreed to license its polyfluorene light-emitting polymer (LEP) technology to US-based
Dow Chemical. CDT and Dow had been working separately to develop polymers for use in LEP displays.
