OTHER ELECTRONICS & NANOTECHNOLOGY
INDUSTRY UPDATE
October 2012
McIlvaine Company
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Bruker Announces New UK Centre of Excellence
Expansion at Cork’s Hittite Microwave Semiconductor
X-FAB to Put $50 Million into MEMS Operations
Southern Connecticut State University Expanding Nanotechnology
Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre Opens
Materion Microelectronics + Services Launches New Facility in New Mexico
Dutron, a Dutch manufacturer of wire harnesses used in the automotive, consumer goods and telecommunications industries, has installed a new Class 7 cleanroom at its assembly plant in Srem, Poland.
The cleanroom will be used for the clean packaging of cables and cable assemblies.
Ralph van Beusekom, Dutron’s general manager, said: “With this cleanroom we take another important step in expanding the service to our customers.”
“A cleanroom like the one we are starting to use now matches perfectly with the strategic choices we have made as a company. Dutron wants to serve its customers in the best possible way. This means that we must be very flexible and be able to offer a wide range of production methods and techniques.”
Dutron says quality is of paramount importance to the firm and this is underlined by its accreditation to ISO 9001. The firm employs 7 people in Dieren, The Netherlands and 350 in Poland.
Bruker’s long-standing presence in the UK and Ireland has reached another milestone with the Official Opening of its new integrated demonstration laboratories, sales and applications offices and dedicated customer collaboration and service facilities.
Crowning a 45 year history of customer commitment across the British Isles, Bruker has now totally redesigned and rebuilt its facilities to deliver new levels of customer experience and support. The improved facility has significantly expanded the demonstration and laboratory space, enabling the move and integration of the newly acquired Bruker Nano Surfaces division that had been based in Cambridge, UK. It now provides access to the latest multi-technology applications, training and a demonstration ‘Centre of Excellence’ that features a broad portfolio of technologies: Magnetic Resonance, Mass Spectrometry, X-Ray diffraction and elemental analysis, Infrared and Raman spectroscopy, and surface analysis.
A number of invited VIP guests from the UK scientific communities and industrial sectors attended the Official Opening this week and enjoyed an exclusive tour of the facilities and of Bruker’s latest innovative solutions. Frank H. Laukien, Ph.D, President and CEO of Bruker Corporation, was present to help celebrate the opening and cut the ribbon to officially open the new facilities. He commented: “I have personally been involved with this facility since its first opening in 1989 and am delighted to see its evolution into a state-of-the-art facility that reflects our belief in focusing on the customer and creating innovative solutions based on complementary technologies.”
Dr. Jeremy Lea, Managing Director of Bruker UK added: “The new Coventry Centre of Excellence brings all our UK operations, our specialist knowledge and our renowned service center together in one place with one thing in mind, the customer. The UK has always been a leading provider of unified customer service across Bruker’s ever expanding portfolio of technologies, but now we have facilities that match our expertise and vision.”
30 jobs are to be created in Cork where the US semiconductor company, Hittite Microwave Corporation will establish two operations.
19 new jobs are to be created in the company's research and development facility while 11 other people will be employed at the company's new International Operations Centre.
Hittite Microwave is a technology company which designs and manufactures high frequency, analog and mixed signal electronics components.
The products that will be designed at the Cork R&D facility will be high performance components for use in telecommunications and sensor systems across a variety of applications.
The Minister for Jobs and Innovation, Richard Bruton said the announcement was a great vote of confidence in Cork and in Ireland.
"This is an innovative US semiconductor company deciding that Cork is the place to carry out very significant research activities due to the presence of high-end research institutes and the availability of talent," the Minister said.
Jason Lynch, Managing Director of the new Cork operation, described it as a very exciting development for Hittite Microwave.
X-FAB Silicon Foundries is to invest more than $50 million during the next three years in cleanroom space, new equipment, R&D and staff for its MEMS operations.
These investments reflect X-FAB’s significant focus on MEMS to support the expected growth in MEMS services.
The new brand X-FAB MEMS Foundry on X-FAB’s campus in Erfurt focuses solely on advanced MEMS manufacturing and developments, and will consolidate all of X-FAB’s MEMS business and activities.
X-FAB CEO Rudi De Winter says, “The MEMS sector is a strategic field of X-FAB’s overall activities to serve the growing needs of our customers. Our customers will benefit from the dedicated resources and expertise of a foundry focused solely on advanced MEMS technology, and built on X-FAB’s solid foundation of technical excellence. This move is X-FAB’s next step towards our goal of becoming one of the top three worldwide suppliers of MEMS foundry services.”
X-FAB says it provided the industry’s first open-platform MEMS 3-axis inertial sensor process available directly from a high-volume pure-play foundry. The company also completed a dedicated noble metal facility for MEMS.
With 8-inch MEMS capability, high-volume manufacturing of bulk and surface micro-machined technologies, with and without CMOS integration is possible. Also, in-house technology platforms for mainstream MEMS applications such as pressure sensors, inertial sensors and infrared sensors have been developed by X-FAB. The firm has also designed ready-to-use IP design blocks for MEMS accelerometers.
NanoProfessor®, the global leader in hands-on undergraduate nanotechnology education, announced today that Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) will expand its leadership in nanotechnology education by implementing the NanoProfessor Nanoscience Education Program. This advance was made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) supporting the Center for Research on Interface Structures and Phenomena (CRISP), a Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at Yale University and SCSU. NanoProfessor's curriculum and NanoInk's NLP 2000 Desktop NanoFabrication System will be housed within the newly established Connecticut State University System Nanotechnology Center located in the Physics Department at SCSU.
Southern Connecticut State University Implements NanoProfessor Program: NanoProfessor Program enhances current curriculum by enabling students to build and manipulate nanoscale structures without the need for a cleanroom
"We are excited for the opportunity to enhance our students' understanding of the nanoscale through hands-on work with NanoInk's NLP 2000 Desktop Nanofabrication System, which operates without the need for a cleanroom and allows students to quickly and easily build custom-engineered nanoscale structures using Dip Pen NanolithographyÒ (DPNÒ)," said Christine Caragianis Broadbridge, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of Physics at SCSU and Education Director for CRISP. "NanoProfessor's curriculum will complement our existing curriculum by engaging students with cutting-edge, hands-on, nano-focused experiments designed to teach them important scientific concepts about the nanoscale."
"We are delighted to have Southern Connecticut State University be the first college in the Northeast to implement our NanoProfessor Nanoscience Education Program into its curriculum," said Dean Hart, Chief Commercial Officer of NanoProfessor. "SCSU is a recognized leader in nanotechnology education and research and we are honored that it has chosen the NanoProfessor Program to broaden its students' understanding and experience in working at the nanoscale."
Southern Connecticut State University is a flourishing community of more than 11,000 students located less than three miles from downtown New Haven. Founded as a teachers college in 1893, SCSU has evolved into a comprehensive university offering 114 graduate and undergraduate programs. More than 1,000 faculty members lead students through a wide range of studies and research specialties.
In just over 24 months, the NanoProfessor Nanoscience Education Program has been chosen to serve as the foundation for undergraduate, hands-on nanotechnology education by over 20 educational programs in five countries. The NanoProfessor Program alternates between classroom lectures and exciting, hands-on nanoscale lab work. The NanoProfessor curriculum includes a textbook authored by leading nanotechnology experts and educators covering the topics of Nanotechnology Instrumentation, Imaging and Nanofabrication techniques, Nanophysics, Nanochemistry, Nanobiology, and perspectives on Environmental, Health, and Safety within nanotechnology. In conducting the hands-on lab experiments, students learn the fundamentals for building custom-engineered nanoscale structures while working with state-of-the-art, nano-centric instrumentation including NanoInk's NLP 2000 Desktop NanoFabrication System, a student-friendly atomic force microscope (AFM), a best-of-class fluorescence microscope, and an advanced nanoparticle characterization instrument.
Nanotechnology is the understanding and control of matter at dimensions between approximately one and 100 nanometers (nm), where unique phenomena enable novel applications which are not feasible when working with bulk materials. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. Encompassing nanoscale science, engineering, and technology, nanotechnology involves imaging, measuring, modeling, and manipulating matter at the nanoscale. A study funded by the National Science Foundation projects that six million nanotechnology workers will be needed worldwide by 2020, with two million of those jobs in the United States. However, as of 2008, there were only 400,000 estimated workers worldwide in the field of nanotechnology, with an estimated 150,000 of those in the United States.
The Honourable Gary Goodyear, Minister of State (Science and Technology), joined hundreds of representatives of Canada's scientific, academic and business communities at the opening of the Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre. A new home to the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC), the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, and the University of Waterloo's Nanotechnology Engineering degree program, the Centre was built with the help of a $25-million grant from the Government.
"The Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre will carry the IQC, the University of Waterloo and Canada to new levels of scientific achievement," said Minister of State Goodyear. "This investment underlines the importance that our government places on supporting basic research and strengthening Canada's research capacity."
As part of Canada's Economic Action Plan, the Harper Government provided a $50-million grant to the IQC, $25 million of which supported the construction of the Quantum-Nano Centre. The state-of-the-art facility was designed to meet stringent scientific standards and encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Earlier this summer, Minister of State Goodyear was in Waterloo to announce awards for two IQC faculty members. David Cory and Michele Mosca will share $3.3 million through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada's Collaborative Research and Training Experience (CREATE) Program to establish innovative research training programs for students.
Since 2006, the Harper Government has invested nearly $8 billion in initiatives supporting science, technology and the growth of innovative firms in Canada, including $5 billion for advanced research, education and training; $2 billion for post-secondary infrastructure; and $1 billion for applied research and financing. This funding has helped to make Canada a world leader in post-secondary education research and to create the knowledge and highly skilled workforce that are required for a more prosperous economy.
Materion Microelectronics & Services has inaugurated a new facility for providing physical vapor deposition (PVD) shield kits with surface treatment and cleaning services for precision parts at Mesa del Sol near Albuquerque in New Mexico.
The new facility enhances Materion’s capacity further in the wake of the recent expansion of the company’s facility at Wheatfield in New York. The two facilities will offer services to important Materion customers from technically challenging industries such as LED, hard disk drives, medical consumables, wireless, optics, semiconductor, photovoltaic and data storage.
By virtue of its location, the new Materion facility at Mesa del Sol provides regional customers of the company with services characterized by stringent lead times owing to the reduction in shipping time as well as associated costs. The facility provides both conventional removal technologies and novel cleaning techniques suitable for intricate physical vapor deposition stacks pertaining to specific industries. The services offered by Materion are unique as they have integrated vertically across the industry chain to offer complete start to finish solutions for precision parts cleaning. Materion is the only international provider offering thin film deposition materials, recovery and refining of precious metals and cleaning services for precision parts. Customers are thus supported by Materion in all phases of precision parts cleaning commencing with qualification of parts and ending with settlement of precious metal.
Materion Microelectronics and Services is a part of the Materion Corporation. The latter, which is based out of Mayfield in Ohio, provides advanced enabling components to markets worldwide through its wholly owned subsidiaries.
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E-mail: editor@mcilvainecompany.com