Category Archives: LEDs

September 9, 2005 – Scientists at Edinburgh University have developed a way of moving an object without touching it, a development especially useful in the area of nanotechnology, reported the Ediburgh, Scotland, Evening News. The team of researchers has been able to move objects across flat surfaces and even up a slope with nothing more than a light beam.

The team, led by Prof. David Leigh, covered a gold Teflon-like surface with specially-engineered synthetic molecular “shuttles”, the components of which move up and down by a millionth of a millimeter when exposed to light. When they place water droplets on the surface and then stimulate it with UV light, the changes alter the surface tension of the liquid and this creates enough energy to move the droplet a distance of up to a millimeter.

Although the movement is tiny, it represents a great technological leap in the new emerging field of nanotechnology. In terms of scale, the process is mind-boggling, being akin to a conventional mechanical machine using a millimeter displacement of pistons to lift an object twice the height of the world’s tallest building.

In the future, the technology could be developed to make molecular machines, and with research could eventually lead to the development of artificial muscles which can perform specific physical tasks. Scientists believe such machines could one day be used to control the movement of drugs around the human body, making sure they go exactly where they are needed. And they could also find their way into “smart” materials, which can change their properties in response to a stimulus such as light.

Although many scientists are working with molecular machines – a process which involves making the parts of molecules move in a controlled fashion – the Edinburgh team is the first to make these machines interact with “real world” objects. Until now, molecular machines have operated in isolation within the laboratory, but this latest piece of research brings them into contact with the everyday world.

Principal researcher Mr Leigh, Forbes Professor of Organic Chemistry at Edinburgh University, said: “Although man’s understanding of how to build and control molecular machines is still at an early stage, nanoscale science and engineering could have a life-enhancing impact on human society comparable in extent to that of electricity, the steam engine, the transistor and the internet. Nature uses molecular machines in virtually every biological process and, when we learn how to build and control such structures, we will surely find that they have the potential to revolutionise molecular-based technologies, from health care to ‘smart’ materials.”

Sep. 6, 2005 – Materials discovery firm and phosphor provider Intematix Corp. of Fremont, Calif., announced that it will provide its White Lightning Y450/Y460 brand of phosphors to Taiwan’s Edison Opto for use in a variety of applications for the white LED and solid state lighting markets.

Edison Opto of Chung-Ho, Taiwan, is focused on LED innovation for applications like power LEDs, LCD backlighting, camera flashes, emerging general illumination and architectural lighting.

“Our two companies recognize the importance of the high power and backlighting applications built on phosphor, optics and packaging innovations,” said Intematix Chief Executive Officer Ruediger Stroh in a prepared statement. “We believe Edison Opto is a valuable partner whose understanding of end systems and innovative designs built around the White Lightning phosphor technology will make a significant contribution to the marketplace.”

The first members of the Intematix phosphor family, the White Lightning Y450 and Y460, were announced in March and are available for high volume use.

TAMPA, Fla. – Ongoing research by Nanobac Life Sciences (www.nanobaclifesciences.com) has led to the discovery of the structure and pathogenic characteristics of nanobacteria that it says can lead to coronary artery disease and other plaque-related diseases. Based on those findings, the company says it plans to develop, license, and market compounds that will destroy or neutralize the particles, and to offer nanobacteria contamination-control services to biopharmaceutical developers.

For the past 17 years, Nanobac researchers have been studying a pathogen they believe is responsible for numerous chronic diseases. The nanobacteria have been characterized as calcifying nanoparticles, or CNPs, because of their ability to create calcium phosphate-coated vesicles or shells around themselves. The bony structures accumulate over time and become calcified plaques.

At the 2005 PDA Viral and TSE Safety Conference held in May, Dr. Olavi Kajander, chief science officer at Nanobac, disclosed that the nanobacteria consist of a core phospholipids vesicle surrounded by a calcium phosphate layer that binds proteins-including blood-clotting proteins and inflammation promoters-from its surroundings.

“Nanobacteria are like ticking time bombs,” Dr. Kajander told the gathering. “The particles are capable of activating multiple disease pathways. This leads us to believe that many diseases, such as kidney stones, atherosclerosis, prostatitis, arthritis, and psoriasis are local manifestations of a systemic disease.”

In establishing a new business initiative resulting from its recent research findings, Nanobac says it has developed a proprietary assay to screen nanobacteria compounds. Compounds showing efficacy, the company says, can then quickly move into animal models and then commercial development where it hopes products will effectively inhibit, destroy or neutralize the CNPs.

The company notes that CNPs also pose a risk in biopharmaceuticals containing human or animal blood components. As a result, Nanobac BioAnalytical Services will work with biopharmaceutical partners to develop and apply methods for avoiding, detecting, and addressing CNPs from raw materials or production substrates. The company’s contamination-control program focuses on host cell lines, animal- and human-derived materials, raw materials, availability of diagnostic procedures, and downstream processes capable of inactivating or removing CNP contaminants.

CRANBURY, N.J. – Able Laboratories Inc. (www.ablelabs.com), which in July had filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in hopes of restructuring while it worked with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA; www.fda.gov) to settle regulatory issues that led to the recall of its products and suspension of all manufacturing operations, has decided instead to sell the business and its assets to one or more third-party purchasers.

The company had been a developer and manufacturer of generic pharmaceuticals.

On behalf of the company, Senior Vice President/Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Garth Boehm had proposed a consent decree to the FDA that would have permitted it to revalidate the product development data included in the company’s previously approved Abbreviated New Drug Applications (ANDA), under new management, and with the data being verified by an independent outside consultant.

Since Able suspended operation of its entire product line in May, the company has not generated income or revenue. To speed up the possible return to production, Able proposed that it relaunch its generic products under ANDA, upon completion of the revalidation work, without the need for full FDA review and approval of all of the data supporting each ANDA. The proposal represented a departure from long-standing FDA policy in situations involving questions of data integrity, but Able felt the proposal was justified based on its voluntary actions to recall products and cease manufacturing.

After careful consideration, however, the FDA declined the proposal, arguing that the relaunch of products would require withdrawal, resubmission with new data, and agency review of ANDAs for products Able intended to manufacture-a process that could take up to 18 months for each case.

In a printed statement, company officials said, “Because Able’s business plan for its reorganization depended on obtaining significant external financing, which in turn was predicated on its being able to return certain products to the market in a more timely manner, it has now determined that the business plan for a reorganization is not feasible.”

In early July, the FDA presented a Form 483 to Dr. Boehm, citing 12 observations based on inspections conducted May 2 through July 1 that led to the voluntary recall and manufacturing cessation, including:

  • Products that failed to meet established standards, specifications and quality control criteria were not rejected. (“Samples of drug products were routinely resampled, and reinjected or reprocessed in the Waters, Empower Data Acquisition System during testing…when out of specification [OOS] were obtained.”)
  • An NDA (New Drug Application) Field Alert Report was not submitted within three working days of receipt of information concerning a failure of one or more distributed batches of a drug to meet the specifications established for it in the application.
  • Laboratory records failed to include complete data derived from all tests, examinations, and assay necessary to assure compliance with established specifications and standards.
  • No written records of investigations into unexplained discrepancies and the failure of a batch, or any of its components, to meet specifications.
  • Employees were not given training in cGMPs and written procedures required by cGMP regulations.
  • Established laboratory control mechanisms were not followed.
  • Control procedures were not established to validate performance of manufacturing processes that could be responsible for causing variability in the characteristics of in-process material and the drug product.

In a written reply to District Director Douglas Ellsworth, Dr. Boehm said, “Able believes that the best path to restore the confidence of the agency, the users of Able products, and the public at large, is through a consent decree of permanent injunction,” which would provide an FDA-sanctioned, court-supervised means for the company to address the observations, improve quality systems and controls, and eventually reintroduce products to the market.

“Given our proposal to proceed under a decree,” Dr. Boehm wrote, “we do not intend to submit a written response to the Form 483. This intent, however, should not be interpreted that the company admits any violation of law or regulations.”

In light of the FDA’s final decision, and the need for the company to reduce expenses, Paul Cottone, Able’s chief restructuring officer, has resigned but will continue to assist the company on a consulting basis.

Particles


September 1, 2005

Compiled by Steve Smith

Daring dairy development

CHELSEA, Mass. – An aseptic processing system for low-acid dairy beverages, developed by Shibuya International (www.shibuya.co.jp) for HP Hood LLC (www.hphood.com), has earned a filing acceptance by the Food and Drug Administration (www.fda.gov) as the first aseptic-based rotary bottle filler in the U.S. The technology provides a package that locks out air, seals in nutrients and flavor, and allows the dairy beverage to remain unrefrigerated for up to six months. The system’s sterile processing and packaging environment allows products to be shelf-stable without the use of preservatives. The rotary bottle filler is accurate to less than one-half gram, and is approved for use with HDPE (high-density polyethylene) bottles. The aseptic dairy processing and packaging machines at Hood’s Winchester, Va., plant were manufactured by Shibuya, and are the first and only high-speed rotary low-acid aseptic dairy application in the country to file with the FDA.

Amazing angstrom adjustments

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – Going beyond submicron nanoscale levels, researchers at Penn State University (www.psu.edu) are working with organic monolayers with 5-angstrom features, which they say hold promise for enabling self-assembly of wafer patterns too small for lithography by serving as templates for chip atoms. The self-assembled monolayers, or SAMs, are being explored as a way to create intricate, angstrom-scale patterns-which serve as placeholders-that can be tuned by adjusting their resulting physical properties. As a result, researchers believe SAMs can potentially be arrayed across wafers. A group led by Professor Paul Weiss is developing a catalog of chemical formulas that can create a variety of self-assembled monolayers to serve as patterns for single-molecule semiconductor devices.

Agency axes antimicrobial

ROCKVILLE, Md. – Effective this month, the Food and Drug Administration (www.fda.gov) will no longer allow the use of the antimicrobial drug enrofloxacin for treating bacterial infections in poultry. The agency says scientific data shows that the drug’s use causes resistance to the bacterium Campylobacter, known as a significant cause of foodborne illness. Chickens and turkeys normally harbor Campylobacter in their digestive tracts without causing them to become ill, yet it’s been discovered that the bacterium is resistant to enrofloxacin when it is used to treat bacterial infections in poultry. The FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine says the resistant bacteria multiply in the digestive tract, and persist and spread through transportation and slaughter. Enrofloxacin belongs to a class of drugs known as fluoroquinolones, marketed by Bayer Corp. under the name Baytril.

Prion primer produced

DUBLIN, Ireland – Research and Markets (www.researchandmarkets.com) has released a report, Prions: A Primer for the Biopharmaceutical Industry, that highlights the importance of risk management for ensuring manufacturing process safety. The report offers insight into the challenges encountered during the manufacture of plasma-derived products or ruminant-sourced raw materials used in biopharmaceutical manufacturing. The report includes the nature of prions based upon currently available knowledge, and issues that must be addressed in the manufacturing process to ensure safe products that comply with regulations.

August 23, 2005 – Technologies and Devices International Inc. (TDI) has demonstrated indium nitride (InN) epitaxial layers and structures. Novel 2-inch diameter InN-on-sapphire templates and InN/GaN heterostructures will be featured at the 6th International Conference on Nitride Semiconductors in Bremen, Germany, from August 27 through September 3.

Optoelectronic and electronic devices based on Group III Nitride materials (GaN, AlN, InN) are the subject of intense development for various applications including solid state lighting, bio and chemical detection systems, environmental, communication, and military equipment. The GaN-based market is projected to reach $5B in 2007 and exceed $7B in 2009.

Dr. Alexander Syrkin, crystal growth key specialist at TDI, commented, “This result is an important step towards HVPE technology for InN-containing materials and devices including high brightness blue, ultra violet, and white light emitting diodes (LEDs). TDI has already demonstrated GaN-based devices by proprietary patented HVPE technology.”

Syrkin added that the new process allows TDI to deposit InN epitaxial layers or 3D nano-size structures in a controllable manner and thanked the intense collaboration with the Army Research Laboratory and Texas Technical University.

Aug. 19, 2005 — A consortium of companies in the Semiconductor Industry Association announced the launch of the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI). It is intended to accelerate research in nanoelectronics in U.S. universities for the benefit of the semiconductor industry

To administer the NRI program, a new entity called the Nanoelectronics Research Corporation (NERC) was formed. It is a subsidiary of Semiconductor Research Corporation, university research management consortium located in Research Triangle Park, N.C.

The initiative’s fifteen-year goal is to demonstrate novel computing devices with critical dimensions below 10 nanometers and to exercise them in simple computer circuits — an achievement that would enable the semiconductor industry to extend Moore’s Law beyond the year 2020 when it is expected to reach the limits of the currently widespread CMOS processing technology.

The National Science Foundation and NERC will jointly fund the initiative, at the rate of $1 million each. Hans Coufal of IBM will be the director of NERC and will head the initiative’s technical program group. A governing council led by Paolo Gargini of Intel and Hans Stork of Texas Instruments will oversee the program’s efforts.

August 17, 2005 – Engineers at Sematech’s Advanced Materials Research Center (AMRC), Austin, TX, are investigating a nanoscale approach to metrology that will allow them to examine new semiconductor structures at the atomic level, and so prepare the way for next-generation electronics.

The new methodology uses computer modeling designed for use with aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopy (TEM), an imaging method that can resolve as small as 0.7 angstrom. Many inter-atomic spacings in crystals, including silicon, have dimensions less than 0.1nm (1 angstrom).

This capability of viewing atom-sized structures will push forward the feasibility of advanced semiconductor structures such as fin-shaped field-effect transistors (FinFETs,) which are hoped-for replacements for conventional CMOS transistors that are running up against fundamental physical limitations.

“Aberration correction has changed the resolution of electron microscopy and opened new windows on the atomic structure of nanotechnology,” said Alain Diebold, a Sematech Senior Fellow and internationally recognized metrology expert. “By adding modeling, we can simulate images much more accurately, and truly understand what we are seeing.”

The AMRC project is being led by Dr. Brian Korgel, U. of Texas at Austin chemical engineering professor, in consultation with Diebold. Its aim is to employ unique software to simulate electron diffraction patterns of nanowires, whose diameters of less than 20nm are similar to the dimensions of next-generation transistor gates and the fin-like structure of FinFETs. However, since nanowires are simpler structures, using them will allow researchers to refine their new microscopy techniques for more demanding metrology in the future.

“In the past, metrology has had trouble keeping up with the rapid advances in semiconductor scaling,” said Diebold. “Now we have a tool that gives us the potential to understand surface and interface morphology, and atomic structure, in ways that we have never been able to do before. It gives us a big leg up in understanding the structures of future devices.”

The AMRC focuses on leading-edge materials and capabilities for next-generation semiconductors, as well as cutting-edge research in nanotechnology, biotechnology, and other related advanced high-tech areas. The aim of the five-year AMRC effort is to accelerate the commercialization of critical technology research that economists believe will generate the industries, careers, and tax revenue of the future.

August 16, 2005 – Technologies and Devices International Inc. (TDI) has announced the availability of novel 3-in. dia. semi insulating substrate materials for nitride-based semiconductor devices. The group-III nitride compound semiconductor material family includes gallium nitride (GaN), aluminum nitride (AlN), and their alloys. The GaN-based market is projected at least $5B for 2007 and more than $7B for 2009.

The product consists of 10-18 micron thick single crystal AlN film deposited on a conductive silicon carbide (SiC) substrate. The product is targeted for substrate applications for ultra high power AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs). Other target applications include high power blue and ultra violet (UV) light emitters, light emitting diodes (LEDs) and laser diodes (LDs).

“Substrate related issues in nitride electronics are well known. Due to lack of native AlN and GaN substrates, nitride devices are fabricated on foreign substrates, which are not lattice and thermally matched to the device structures, limiting their performance, reliability, and causing device degradation. Proprietary stress-control technology developed at TDI allows us to put in production these new substrate materials, which will allow the nitride community to speed up development and commercialization of advanced nitride semiconductor devices,” stated Vladimir Dmitriev, president and CEO of TDI.

August 15, 2005 – Agilent Technologies Inc. has agreed to a series of actions, including divesting its semiconductor products segment for $2.66 billion, in order to reposition itself as a “pure play” measurement company. Agilent expects to reduce global infrastructure costs by $450 million and infrastructure-related employment by ~1300 jobs.

Agilent is divesting the semiconductor products segment to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) and Silver Lake Partners for $2.66 billion, subject to closing adjustments. It also made a definitive agreement to sell its stake in Lumileds to Royal Philips Electronics for $950 million plus repayment of $50 million of debt from Lumileds. The company also plans to spin off its SOC and memory test businesses as soon as practical in 2006.

Agilent also announced it will return the cash proceeds of the divestitures to its owners through a $4 billion share repurchase program to commence immediately. The company also announced it intends to call its $1.15 billion convertible debenture, which potentially will reduce its outstanding shares by 36 million.

Bill Sullivan, Agilent president and CEO, said that these actions enable Agilent to focus exclusively on realizing its full potential as a measurement company. “It has become increasingly clear that investors also prefer this exclusive focus on the $40 billion measurement market,” Sullivan said.

The company currently expects that the divestitures will be completed by the end of its fiscal year, Oct. 31, 2005, subject to closing conditions, including governmental and regulatory approvals.

This reduction in employment will be accomplished through a combination of employee transfers to the divestiture and spin-off, attrition, and work force reduction. The company expects this restructuring to be largely completed by the middle of FY06, and the roughly $200 million implementation cost to be essentially offset by the proceeds of property and other asset sales as the company reduces its global footprint.