Category Archives: LEDs

HOUSTON, Sept. 11, 2002 — With the U.S. military sizing up its battlefield needs for a new confrontation with Iraq, Army procurement directors have sped up a program to mass-manufacture new MEMS-based navigation and guidance systems for missiles and munitions.

“We’re trying to proliferate smart weapons on the battlefield,” said Albert Warnasch, a program director for the Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command. MEMS are a particularly critical component of that drive, he added, as they greatly reduce the overall tonnage of material that is directed to a battlefield, reducing the time and expense of preparing for war.

During Desert Storm, he said, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein gave the U.S. military three to four months to gear up an attack. “If we did it again,” he told a group of microelectronics experts gathered for Nanotech 2002 in Houston, it would be unlikely that Hussein would be as accommodating.

Last May, the military sped up its selection of two contractors — consortiums led by Honeywell and L-3 Communications — as part of a $100 million plan to design and produce the new MEMS systems for missiles and munitions. The contractors are committed to paying 30 percent of the cost, said Warnasch, an investment that will be paid off by providing 90 percent of the military’s guidance systems — some 100,000 to 200,000 units a year.

The new MEMs program was given a “shotgun start,” said Vicki LeFevre, a co-program manager from the Army Aviation and Missile Command. “The hurdle is to mass-produce these,” she said, adding that the first new systems are expected to arrive in the first quarter of next year.

“We’re hoping the fact that we’re throwing a lot of money into this process will resolve this issue,” Warnasch said.

But the Army expects a sizeable return as well. Current systems not only weigh 2 pounds, but they cost $7,000 to $8,000 each. The new MEMS systems will be considerably lighter and should cost in the range of $1,200 to $1,500 each.

Sept. 11, 2002 — Lightconnect Inc., a Newark, Calif.-based supplier of MEMS-based components and modules for optical networks, has secured $9 million in its third round of funding.

The round was led by Sevin Rosen Funds. Incubic LLC, Morgenthaler Ventures, U.S. Trust, U.S. Venture Partners and Optical Capital Group also participated. All are previous investors in the company.

According to David Fenner, vice president of finance, the company’s most immediate goal was to strengthen its cash position to reassure customers. “They want to make sure we have a strong balance sheet,” he said. “We knew at some point in the next six months we would need to go out and get some funding. We decided to do it sooner rather than later.”

Other goals for the financing include expanding business development and marketing activities and continuing new product development. Fenner said the company has significantly increased production of its variable optical attenuators in response to increased demand from customers.

Founded in 1999, Lightconnect previously announced $8.4 million in first round funding in June 2000, and $15.8 million in second round funding in July 2001, which was later extended to $16.5 million. Fenner said current financing is sufficient to carry the company well into 2004, and subsequent fund raising will be dictated by market conditions.

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LOWELL, Mass., Sept. 3, 2002 — Sukant Tripathy was an accomplished scientist, engineer and professor who dreamed of bringing electricity to impoverished regions such as his homeland of Bihar, India.

It was a dream that Tripathy never had the chance to achieve. He drowned nearly two years ago while on vacation in Hawaii, and died at age 48.

Today, however, his dream is being realized. His pioneering work in materials science has been formed into a business, Konarka Technologies, and the company is on the move.

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Spun out of research Tripathy conducted at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Konarka makes plastics that use solar power to run electrical devices — for example, a chemical sensor that uses its plastic casing to harness power from sunlight. Tripathy’s colleagues and former students formed the company at the end of 2000, shortly after his death.

This summer has brought a flurry of activity to Konarka, no longer just honing its technology, but taking products to market. The company hired a new chief executive recently to oversee its commercial efforts and Konarka should close between $7 million and $8 million in venture funding sometime next month, the company said.

Executives credit Tripathy for laying the groundwork, and they dedicate a page on the company Web site to his contributions. Even the name “Konarka” refers to a Hindu temple in Orissa, India, one of Tripathy’s favorite places. Not coincidentally, the temple is dedicated to the sun god Surya.

The heart of Konarka’s technology is a new way to make photovoltaic cells (PVCs) from nanosized particles of titanium dioxide. Until now, PVCs have been made by heating the titanium crystals to 450 degrees Celsius and then coating them with a light-sensitive dye — a process known as “sintering.” Konarka has perfected a “cold-sintering” method that achieves the same result at temperatures of 150 degrees or lower.

Those cooler temperatures are critical to new uses for PVCs. When forged at higher temperatures, PVC material can only be coated onto glass, which makes for expensive, delicate product applications. Cold-sintering allows the PVC material to be coated onto plastics; in essence, a product’s outer shell becomes its power source.

The Konarka cell does not generate any more electricity than other power cells, or do so more efficiently. Its appeal is that the cell can be manufactured far more cheaply, so Konarka can churn out a large supply and, the company hopes, put them into all sorts of devices.

“It far outstrips what the silicon industry is doing,” said Russell Gaudiana, Konarka’s vice president of research and development.

Bill Beckenbaugh, Konarka’s chief executive, said the company will start by making cheaper versions of products that already use PVCs such as weather observation posts, chemical sensors and emergency lighting. Traditional PVCs have existed for decades, so Beckenbaugh wants to follow the path already carved out by customers and older PVC businesses.

“Those markets establish the conventional wisdom of uses,” he said. “We want to eliminate the need of extra generators or anything that burns a fuel.”

In the long term, Beckenbaugh hopes Konarka can also provide self-sufficient electrical devices to poor or isolated regions of the world, where it is too expensive to wire individual homes and businesses to an electrical grid.

Konarka has demonstration models of its PVC now, and plans to start manufacturing them itself sometime next year. But Beckenbaugh said Konarka will need other manufacturing and sales partnerships if it is to thrive.

Konarka already has a lucrative contract with the Natick Soldier Center, an Army research outfit in nearby Natick, Mass, which has brought Konarka several hundred thousand dollars in revenue.

Beckenbaugh said that working with the center gives Konarka an entry into the defense business and furthers Konarka’s research on “solar fiber,” which will shift its PVC technology from plastics into textiles.

Lynne Samuelson, a research chemist at the Soldier Center who works with Konarka, said cold-sintering has been vital to the Army’s efforts at self-powering devices and the much-hyped initiative to create the “Soldier of the Future.”

“If you heat at high temperatures, you can’t make them on plastics,” she said. “That’s always been a problem. I think Konarka has a lot of promise.”

Samuelson said other companies have tried to tackle cold-sintering or other new PVC technologies, but “Konarka has taken it much further,” especially in manufacturing.

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Company file: Konarka Technologies
(last updated Sept. 3, 2002)

Company
Konarka Technologies

Headquarters
600 Suffolk St.,
Fourth Floor
Lowell, Mass., 01854

History
Advanced photovoltaic research at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, led by Sukant Tripathy, led to the low-temperature materials processing technology that would become the cornerstone of Konarka. Tripathy had established the school’s Institute for NanoScience Engineering and Technology and founded its Center for Advanced Materials in 1992. Shortly after his accidental death in December 2000, his colleagues founded Konarka to focus on the technology Tripathy helped develop.

Industry
Power supplies

Small tech-related products and services
Konarka has developed a solar cell that is flexible, lightweight, portable and usable for multiple applications. It is a result of Tripathy’s breakthrough “cold-sintering” process that allows photovoltaic cells (PVC) to be coated onto materials other than glass, reducing the cost of solar cell manufacturing.

Management
Bill Beckenbaugh: president and chief executive officer
Russell Gaudiana: vice president of research and development
Paul Wormser: chief operating officer

Employees
25

Investment history
Konarka has been funded by the University of Massachusetts, undisclosed angel investors and Zero Stage Capital, which contributed roughly $500,000 to its seed funding round in August of 2001. Konarka hopes to close on $7 million to $8 million in funding this September.

Selected strategic partners and customers
Konarka holds a contract with the Natick Soldier Center in Massachusetts that has helped bring in several hundred thousand dollars in revenue.

Competitors

  • VHF Technologies

  • Cambridge Display Technology

    • Goals
    In the short term, the company wants to begin manufacturing of cold-sintered PVCs; in the long term, Konarka wants to forge manufacturing partnerships and launch products using the company’s technology

    Barriers
    There are pre-existing concepts about what products are suitable for PVCs. There’s also a need for manufacturing partners to achieve broad, mass-market success.

    What keeps them up at night?
    The possible reluctance by manufacturers or consumers to embrace the concept of solar-powered devices.

    Contact
    URL: www.konarkatech.com
    Phone: 978-654-6961
    Fax: 978-937-2062
    E-mail: [email protected]

    — Research by Gretchen McNeely

    Aug. 30, 2002 — Takara Bio Inc. and Mirus Corp. have developed a high-sensitivity glass slide for DNA microarray systems, according to Japan Corporate News Network.

    The Takara-Hubble Slide reportedly features a detection level sensitivity 20 times greater than standard glass slides. It immobilizes DNA fragments by means of a covalent bond, the sturdy bond between two atoms that share a pair of electrons.

    The slide, which is expected to be commercially available next month, enables detection of very weak signals. That attribute led to the slide’s name — the Hubble Space Telescope can observe stars and galaxies with high accuracy because it is not affected by Earth’s atmosphere, the report said.

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    Aug. 29, 2002 — Small tech is heading to the small screen.

    Displays made of glowing plastic molecules called OLEDs (organic light emitting diodes) promise brighter and cheaper alternatives to liquid crystal displays (LCDs).

    Made of thin, nanostructured polymer films, OLED screens based on technologies developed by companies such as Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) in England and Eastman Kodak Co. of Rochester, N.Y., are beginning to hit the market.

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    OLEDs could enable thinner, lower-powered and more flexible screens for uses in products such as cameras, PDAs, cell phones, laptops, computer monitors and even televisions.

    Because they emit their own light, while LCDs require a light source, OLEDs would use less power, take up less space and be lighter — all cost effective advantages over LCDs.

    OLED expert Barry Young, vice president of DisplaySearch, an Austin, Texas, market research company, forecasts that OLED screen sales will reach $2.5 billion by 2006.

    Kodak is already producing OLED color screens based on its “small molecule” technology in partnership with Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd. Commercial applications include Pioneer car stereos and Motorola Inc. cell phones.

    Universal Display Corp. of Ewing, N.J., announced Aug. 12 that the U.S. Department of Energy has awarded it two $100,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts to develop its OLED technologies for general lighting applications.

    On Aug. 16, DuPont Displays and RiTdisplays of Taiwan launched high-volume production of OLED display modules at a fabrication facility in Hsinchu, Taiwan.

    CDT’s polymer screens, produced with inkjet-printing equipment from the company’s Litrex Corp. subsidiary, have already debuted in monochrome versions for a Philips electric shaver, said Stewart Hough, CDT vice president of business development. He also said the company expects full-color products to reach the market by the third quarter next year, with full-color active matrix displays suitable for PDAs and laptop screens ready by 2004.

    Last week, CDT announced a partnership to integrate MediaWorks Technology Corp. Inc.’s System-on-Chip” (SoC) display controllers with its polymer displays. One goal is to use MediaWorks’ intelligent electronics to reduce power consumption in portable devices. Another is to extend the life span of the plastic display’s pixels by sending signals only when needed.

    Young said that OLED screen life has greatly improved from about 2,000 hours a few years ago to 10,000 hours today, and he expects life spans to double to 20,000 hours in the next year or two.

    Young anticipates that the plastic screens will initially cost more than LCDs and find applications in small displays like camera viewfinders and mobile phones. But within three to four years, he believes, they will cost 10 to 20 percent less and boast higher performance than LCDs.

    Compared with LCDs, Young noted, OLEDs offer higher contrast, faster response time and wider viewing angles while using less power. Frost & Sullivan consultant Mamta Kailkhura wrote in an April report that “the superior display properties of OLEDs pose a direct challenge to the prevailing dominance of LCDs in the flat panel displays market.”

    Young expects to see OLEDs move up into notebook computers and eventually into television sets. Young said that next year Sony will market a 13-inch OLED television based on Kodak and Sanyo’s small molecule display.

    Young said that Kodak has the early commercial lead and an advantage in color and lifetime over CDT’s technique. He noted, however, Kodak’s approach requires materials to be evaporated through a mask, while CDT polymers can be put into a solution and applied to a surface much more efficiently and economically with inkjet equipment.

    “With CDT’s technology, you can pattern pixels more densely” for high resolution displays, he explained. Young also noted that CDT’s process was 5 to 10 percent faster than Kodak’s.

    CDT’s Hough said that small technology has been essential in commercializing OLEDs. Small tech comes into play in everything from equipment used to measure and analyze the light-emitting polymer films, Hough said, to refining the complex organic chemistry necessary to improve the optical performance of polymer displays.

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    Aug. 26, 2002 — Say what you will about the down-on-its-luck “Internet economy,” but that’s where California Molecular Electronics Corp. (CALMEC), one of the first incorporated startups in molecular electronics technology, raised its operating capital.

    In February 2000, CALMEC began selling shares directly to the public over its Web site. A year later, when the offering closed, CALMEC had sold 120,239 shares of its common stock for a total of $721,434.

    “Phenomenal to raise that kind of money” with a direct public offering, said Tom Stewart-Gordon, publisher of the SCOR Report, a Dallas-based newsletter that tracks small corporate offerings. According to SCOR Report data, 297 DPOs were filed in the United States in 2001. CALMEC is the only nanotechnology-based company Stewart-Gordon has known to have registered for a DPO, also called a self-underwritten initial public offering.

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    “We weren’t looking to raise a large amount of money so making the offering through an underwriter didn’t make good economic sense,” said James J. Marek, CALMEC’s president and chief executive officer.

    CALMEC, founded in 1997 to produce and sell products and services related to molecular electronics, had 338 shareholders of record as of Dec. 31, 2001, according to SEC documents.

    Research is under the direction of Robert Schumaker, executive vice president and co-founder. Schumaker works in leased lab space at San Jose State University in California. Marek has his office in Huntsville, Ala. Jon Leonard, CALMEC’s chairman and co-founder, is based in Tucson, Ariz.

    CALMEC’s products are intellectual property and technical services. It owns several patents related to molecular electronics. Its real prize is ownership of the Chiropticene single-molecule optical switching technology.

    The most attractive candidates for commercialization in the near term are memory, optical router and display applications, said Marek. A 2-D memory unit based on the Chiropticene switch could be complete in less than two years, he added, given appropriate funding and the right strategic partner.

    “The chiroptical switch idea is very clever,” said Josef Michl. “Research work on it is proceeding at a steady clip. It still remains to be seen whether the sensitivity of the device will be sufficient for practical applications, so more work is needed.” Michl, a professor in the department of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is a member of CALMEC ‘s technical advisory board.

    In 1999, Technology Review, a journal from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published a list called “The Nanotech Nine.” It featured U.S. companies pursuing commercial payoffs in nanotech. CALMEC led the list, followed by IBM, Motorola, Raytheon Systems and Hewlett-Packard.

    A member of CALMEC’s technical advisory committee at the time, Mark Reed, was quoted extensively in an article accompanying the list. However, Reed, an engineering and applied physics professor at Yale, and James Tour, a professor at Rice University’s Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, later resigned from CALMEC’s technical advisory committee. Tour and Reed were among founders of a privately held company with a similar name — Molecular Electronics Corp. (MEC).

    All the companies face substantial barriers. For instance, a single-molecule switch doesn’t mean every device needs only one molecule, said Linley Gwennap, a microprocessor industry analyst with the Linley Group of Mountain View, Calif.

    Comparing chemical bottom-up fabrication to the way silicon chips are made today, Gwennap pointed out that a transistor is a switch. “There are tens of millions of transistors on a Pentium 4 chip,” he said.

    One of the problems of nanoelectronics is getting all the molecules to work in unison. That leads to one of the biggest barriers facing the emerging technology. “It’s one thing for IBM to drag single molecules around,” Gwennap said. In the end, however, the molecules have to be packaged into electronics devices that, as Gwennap put it “can be manufacturable.”

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    Company file: California Molecular Electronics
    (last updated Aug. 26, 2002)

    Company
    California Molecular Electronics (CALMEC)

    Location
    Headquarters:
    50 Airport Pkwy.
    San Jose, Calif., 95110-1011

    Alabama office:
    1080 Grande View Blvd, #828
    Huntsville, Ala., 35824

    Arizona office:
    1500 E. Pusch Wilderness Dr., #5202
    Tucson, Ariz. 85737-6033

    History
    Incorporated in March, 1997

    Industry
    Molecular electronics

    Small tech-related products and services
    CALMEC maintains the IP rights for Chiropticene, a one-molecule switching process. The company also offers its technical services for R&D or product development.

    Management
    Jon N. Leonard: chairman and co-founder
    James J. Marek Jr.: president and chief executive officer
    Robert R. Schumaker: executive vice president of R&D and co-founder

    Employees
    Four full-time, two part-time

    Investment history
    In February 2001, CALMEC completed a direct Internet-based stock offering of over 120,000 shares, bringing in $721,434 for the company. CALMEC has also received an SBIR Phase I NSF grant, and closed a private placement offering in October 2001. The company has raised a total of $2 million, according to CEO James J. Marek.

    Selected strategic partners and customers
    CALMEC’s business strategy is geared to licensing its IP to partners. Potential targets include: data storage providers, supercomputer developers, makers of photographic-related products and optics firms.

    Competitors

  • NanoSonic

  • Molecular Electronics Corp.

    • Goals
    “Develop the Chiropticene-based prototype devices and establish the necessary strategic financial and industrial partnerships,” Marek said. “Generate long-term returns for our investors by capturing a significant portion of the emerging molecular electronics industry.”

    Why they’re in small tech?
    “We believe in the principle that individual molecules can be engineered to perform the functions of electronic devices,” Marek said. “We believe these molecular-based devices can be developed into near-term commercial applications. We believe in the predicted inability of current technologies to continue to support the technological and economic growth needed for the future. And we believe that molecular-based devices will be the answer.”

    What keeps them up at night?
    “Seeing to the success of the company,” Marek said. “We have some great investors in the company that share our vision of the future and enthusiasm in the feasibility and inevitability of molecular electronics. They deserve and receive no less than our maximum effort

    Selected relevant patents
    The Chiropticene patent
    Supramolecular Opto-Electronic Architecture

    Contact
    URL: www.calmec.com
    Phone: 408-451-8404
    Fax: 408-437-7777
    E-mail: [email protected]

    Recent news
    CALMEC presents at 5th ISTC seminar in St. Petersburg, Russia
    NSF sponsors CALMEC exhibit at “Small Wonders” symposium

    — Research by Gretchen McNeely

    AUG. 16–BETHESDA, MD — PDA Chair Floyd Benjamin today announced with regret that, after 11 years, Edmund M. Fry, president of the international association for pharmaceutical science and technology, will embark upon a new career this September.

    A search committee will be formed to find a successor.

    “Ed Fry has been a remarkable leader for PDA over the years,” Benjamin says. “Ed joined the organization at a critical stage in its development and set a direction that has served PDA and the industry very well. Under his guidance, the association has become a strong and respected voice regarding the science and technology of pharmaceutical manufacturing.”

    Most notable of his accomplishments are the “solid relationships built between PDA, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other regulatory bodies worldwide,” he adds

    Fry joined PDA in 1991. During his years at the helm, many important milestones were attained, including: PDA headquarters moved from Philadelphia to Bethesda, MD, proximate to the FDA; a threefold increase in membership from 3,500 to 10,500; significant expansion of the PDA Short Course program, culminating with the opening of the PDA Training and Research Institute (PDA-TRI), the first of its kind laboratory training facility for the pharmaceutical industry; publication of more than 20 Technical
    Reports including the launch of the series on Current Practices in Aseptic Processing, plus a catalog of book titles; significant growth in PDA chapters, both domestically and internationally; establishment of a PDA office in Europe; licensing of the Audit Repository Center; and key support of the Product Quality Research Initiative (PQRI) from inception to present.

    “Certainly my years at PDA have been among the most rewarding of my career,” said Fry. “I will miss my close working relationship with the PDA Officers, Board, members and staff, and will continue to be an active member of PDA in my new role.”

    Fry leaves PDA to join IVAX Corporation as Vice President of Compliance. Prior to joining PDA, he was Director, Division of Manufacturing and Product Quality, FDA, responsible for developing and implementing federal policy and requirements applicable to human drugs manufacturing and quality control. In 1989-1990, he led the FDA generic drugs investigations team that directed field efforts in uncovering and prosecuting fraud in the generic drug industry.

    In other news from PDA, Gautam Maitra of Basel, Switzerland, will join PDA as European director in September.

    “We are delighted that Maitra has accepted our invitation to join the staff,” Fry says. “With 15 years of European pharmaceutical industry experience, and familiarity with EMEA and FDA guidelines and regulations, he is ideally suited to handle PDA responsibilities in Europe. Moreover, his ability to communicate across functional, cultural and geographic boundaries made him an exceptional choice.”

    Maitra, a chemist, has worked almost his entire career within the pharmaceutical and OTC industries. He has held project management positions in Basel, first with CIBA Geigy AG and most recently with Novartis Pharma AG where he has served for the past six years. Maitra has lived and worked in three European countries: Finland, Sweden and Switzerland, and is fluent in three languages: English, German and French (with a working knowledge of Swedish). He will continue to be based in Basel.

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    Aug. 5, 2002 — When Alcatel Optronics announced the management buyout of its Dutch division in July, the new company decided on a name that describes what it does: C2V.

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    The name stands for “Concept to Volume,” which means the company helps customers create microsystems from the initial concept to pilot production and eventually to high volume production.

    For this purpose, the company uses a process it calls Seamless Microsystem Engineering, which incorporates design for manufacturing, packaging and assembly. The company has access to a clean room for low volume production and works with foundries and assembly subcontractors such as Onstream MST, Micromontage and Eurasem for larger volumes.

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    “With the current ongoing projects and business the company has a solid base for further growth. Especially, the merger of the three business units led to a synergy that offers many opportunities for future products and services,” said Vincent Spiering, vice president of marketing and sales.

    Odin, a MEMS mask layout editor, is one of the recent software products that has resulted from this synergy. It simplifies the layout and design process of MEMS devices considerably by offering an extensive library of elements for dedicated MEMS applications.

    The company’s revenue comes from a variety of places. “On average, 25 percent of the revenue results from business in Asia and Israel, 25 percent from the U.S. and 50 percent from Europe, mainly from outside the Netherlands,” Spiering said.

    So, if the company’s customers are elsewhere, was the Netherlands the right place to start the business?

    “Yes, as former Ph.D. students of the University of Twente, which has established a reputation in the Netherlands as ‘the entrepreneurial university,’ we have always been encouraged by our professors to start a high tech company in MEMS,” Spiering explained. “The first two years, we were located at the university and received much support from them. Eventually, we had to move from the university to get rid of the ‘academic image’ and establish a more commercial approach. The time at the university allowed us to start without large investments and venture capital.”

    This approach is supported by Mark Wilson of Greenfield Capital Partners, a Dutch private equity firm that invested in the management buyout. “There is an increasing interest from the European private equity community for innovative intellectually based university spinoffs,” he said.

    Kees Eijkel, technical commercial director of the MESA+ institute, a large MEMS research facility related to the University of Twente, also observes a change in mentality at the Dutch universities. “Commercialization of research results through spinoffs has gained much more attention and interest in recent years.”

    Spiering, together with Job Elders and Gert-Jan Burger, two other former Ph.D. students from MESA+, founded Twente MicroProducts (TMP) in 1995. The company merged with an integrated optics software and design company — BBV Software & Design — as part of Kymata in 2000 and later in 2001 as part of Alcatel Optronics.

    Currently, C2V has three main business units: integrated optics software, integrated optics design and MEMS design. The integrated optics design unit will work exclusively for Alcatel Optronics for 18 months. The MEMS unit offers design of prototypes as well as small-, medium- and large-scale production.

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    Company file: C2V
    (last updated Aug. 5, 2002)

    Company
    C2V

    Headquarters
    P.O. Box 318
    7500 AH Enschede
    The Netherlands

    History
    C2V is the result of a 2002 management buyout of Alcatel’s Dutch division (Alcatel Optronics Netherlands BV, later renamed C2V). However, it has its origins in Twente MicroProducts. TMP was founded in 1995 and later merged with BBV Software & Design as part of Kymata’s purchase of both companies in 2000. Kymata itself was purchased by Alcatel in 2002.

    Industry

  • MEMS design, prototyping and low-volume production

  • Optical design software

    • Small tech-related products and services
    C2V targets telecom and non-telecom OEMs with product and service offerings that integrate MEMS microengineering capabilities with the use of planar optics design software — Seamless Microsystem Engineering. Customers are guided through the development process from initial design through prototyping, optimization, manufacturing and packaging.

    Management
    Job Elders: chief executive officer
    Martin Amersfoort: vice president, product management
    Vincent Spiering: vice president, marketing and sales

    Employees
    40

    Investment history
    C2V is funded by Netherlands-based Greenfield Capital Partners, a participant (along with Spiering, Amersfoort and Elders) in the Alcatel management buyout.

    Selected strategic partners and customers

  • As part of the buyout agreement, C2V will work with Alcatel Optronics for 18 months, focusing on planar design R&D.

  • The firm is closely tied with the MESA+ Research Institute of the University of Twente.

  • C2V collaborates with large-scale production fabs SensoNor, Colibrys and OnStream.

  • The integrated optics software unit mainly targets telecom suppliers. Examples of software customers are JDS Uniphase, Nortel Networks and Samsung, according to Vincent Spiering, vice president of marketing and sales.

  • The MEMS unit also serves nontelecom markets. Its customers are mainly instrumentation and microfluidics system suppliers such as Brooks Instrument, Spiering said.

    Competitors
    University-based MEMS research programs are potential C2V competitors, along with other small spinoffs and foundries themselves, many of which also offer component design, prototyping and packaging.

    Barriers to market
    C2V is juggling twin issues of high costs associated with the concept-to-product process and risks associated with forays into new technologies and markets.

    Goals
    The management team is currently working on a business plan to expand activities within two years. “However, as we are opportunity hunters, if something comes up earlier, we will not hesitate,” Spiering said.

    Why they’re in small tech
    “We believe the micromachine industry has very large opportunities, if you’re able to select the realistic products with the right market potential,” Spiering said.

    What keeps them up at night
    “Finding the best solutions for our customers in order to keep them satisfied, and to bring real products to the market,” Spiering said.

    Contact
    URL: www.c2v.nl
    Phone: 31 53 4 889 889
    Fax: 31 53 4 889 890
    Email: [email protected]

    Selected relevant patents
    Passband flattening of a phasar

    Recent news
    Alcatel Optronics sells Dutch arm

    — Research by Gretchen McNeely

    • By Mark A. DeSorbo

    MONTGOMERYVILLE, PA-It was late 1999 when Air Energy Systems (AES) and MSS Clean Technology Inc. (Buford, GA) teamed up to provide contamination control solutions for numerous processes, a collaboration that recently, yet inadvertently, led to AES acquiring the assets of MSS and those of its wholly owned subsidiary, LSI Cleanrooms, which is also located in Buford.

    Ralph J. Melfi, director of sales and marketing for AES, says neither company planned on an acquisition when the two firms formed a strategic partnership exemplified in a series of advertisements that ran in CleanRooms magazine.

    “It wasn't the intent,” says Melfi, adding that the association is where the “marriage” began.

    MSS and LSI manufacture cleanroom wall panel systems and other components, with MSS geared toward current good manufacturing practices (cGMPs) for the pharmaceutical side and LSI concentrated on the microelectronics arena. AES designs and builds turnkey systems and cleanroom components for controlled environments ranging from ISO Class 3 to ISO Class 8.

    Calls placed by CleanRooms to MSS in the United States and Europe were not returned.

    Melfi, however, says AES had been looking for a manufacturer to acquire, and when the MSS parent company, MSS Clean Technology Ltd. (York, UK), decided to focus its efforts in Europe, the U.S. MSS operations presented “a natural fit” as well as an avenue for growth.

    “We had a tremendous rapport with them,” he says. “With our position in the market and domestic manufacturing, it just made sense for us to take it on from an ownership standpoint. By us taking on the brand names, while they maintain MSS Limited, each is able to deliver more cost-competitive products. It was strategic to pay more attention to our own backyards.”

    Adds Linda Jones, marketing coordinator, “It's a mutual recognition of one another's commitments.”

    AES, Melfi says, will continue to manufacture cleanroom wall and ceiling panels at the new 40,000-square-foot MSS-LSI manufacturing facility in Buford, which MSS completed late last year. Along with maintaining its own regional design-build operations and national product distribution, AES will also continue the supply and installation of MSS Pharma Systems' cGMP wall and ceiling systems in North America and Puerto Rico.

    “It's been a seamless transition,” Melfi adds. “We haven't missed a beat. We acquired two brand names, and we will maintain them. We also see [future] expansion and product development capabilities.”

    While AES has been in business since 1986, MSS entered the U.S. cleanroom market in 1994. Two years later, it completed an ophthalmic component manufacturing plant for Alcon ASPEX in Dallas. In 1997, MSS completed a cleanroom for Mallinckrodt Veterinary Biologics (Raleigh, NC), which, according to MSS, was the largest biologics plant in the United States. In 1999, MSS completed a project for 3M in Singapore.

    COVER STORY

    Inspecting leadless packages

    BY RONNY THERIAULT

    Semiconductor manufacturers are pressured these days to decrease the size of components while increasing their functionality. Driven by a new generation of electronic devices, ranging from portable hand-held devices to large boards used in telecommunications routers, new integrated circuit (IC) packages have been developed based on quad flat no-lead (QFN) and micro lead frame (MLF) designs to maximize silicon real estate and boost performance.

    These devices do away with large gull wing leads in favor of micro pads (planar exposed frame contacts) that can be densely packed into areas of a few dozen square millimeters. The reduction in component size, coupled with the accompanying functional requirements (greater thermal dissipation in QFN designs, reduced power consumption and greater logic ability), has resulted in smaller, feature-rich and expensive-to-manufacture packages. Consequently, as the value of these micro frame components increases, so does the need for greater component inspection. Unfortunately, much is unknown regarding the defects associated with the various steps of manufacturing QFN packages.

    Inspecting Leadless Packages
    New “leadless” packages are pushing the limits of automated optical inspection (AOI). Experts estimate that a standard 0201 form factor component requires inspection systems with a minimum resolution of 20 µm in three dimensions. In some cases, that figure can be even smaller, depending on the type of defect (such as incorrect laser mark vs. plastic cracks, flashing and burrs).

    Traditional approaches, including laser scanning, multi-camera stereovision and interferometric techniques, can achieve 2-D and sometimes 3-D inspection of defects on thin shrink small outline packages (TSSOP) and ball grid array (BGA) packages, but they fail to deliver a complete 3-D inspection capability for high-speed lines that produce QFNs, TSSOPs, BGAs, and advanced packages.


    Figure 1. Although manufacturing processes vary from fab to fab, each step of the QFN manufacture process requires careful inspection to maintain high yields.
    Click here to enlarge image

    A technology called fast Moiré interferometry (FMI) was first deployed in 1999 for difficult inspection challenges with BGAs and TSSOPs. This technology simplifies the inspection hardware by using only one camera, one moving grid filter, and one light source to collect X-, Y- and Z-axis volumetric pixel acquisition data for each pixel position with resolution down to 3 µm. Systems using FMI technology have been shown to be useful for identifying micro defects associated with QFN, MLF and other types of micro lead packages. The inspection speeds can be up to 20,000 units per hour (UPH), with low false failure rates, using turret feeders.

    This article will detail the QFN manufacturing process with special emphasis on defects associated with packaging steps and how an inspection system can identify these defects at high speeds.

    The No-lead Packaging Process
    As I/O counts increase and shrink with QFN designs, and because no-lead architectures require even tighter planarity and pitch requirements, automated inspection processes are used at more steps of the manufacturing process. As shown in Figure 1, a QFN package typically is inspected at many points in the fab process: before and after lithography; after die and wire bonding; and after molding, singulation and packaging. The complexity and cost of these components, along with dropping margins, require that testing be done – not only for customer satisfaction – but also to correct process-related defects as soon as they happen. During the molding stage, bubbles, contaminants and variations in flow pressure can lead to voids in the plastic casing, grooves between contact pads, and other surface irregularities that affect both the aesthetic quality of the IC and its ability to make contact with the PCB. Deflashing, cutting the lead frame sections into strips, and saw or punch-out singulation can lead to chip-outs and cracks in the plastic molding.

    Other defects associated with these steps include “bridging” leads (such as when the saw deposits metal fragments between contact pads that could lead to a short), “smeared” leads damaged during the saw or punch-out process, and overexposed lead frames. Mechanical steps in the process also can add to coplanarity mismatch among contact pads, or excessive pitch variations of the lead frame or package. Laser marking can experience mechanical failure of the write beam or control mechanism, or put on the wrong identifying data. Finally, major manufacturers of QFN components have reported a new defect associated with tape remnants stuck to the exposed lead frame that are not removed during chip wash. After reviewing the variety of defects, a final inspection of the chip package becomes an obvious requirement. However, this inspection cannot bottleneck the manufacturing process.

    Inspection Choices
    Choosing the right tool for a job requires more than an answer to the simple question, “Can it work?” Today's competitive market requires that a tool be capable of identifying 100 percent of the defects with low false reject rates – and at speeds that keep the cost of inspection per component to a minimum.

    Several solutions exist for chip package inspection, but many of these systems cannot detect defects less than 10 µm in diameter. Laser triangulation, for example, offers high-resolution inspection. A laser scans across the IC and a position-sensitive detector measures the reflected light, which carries information related to the Z-position for each point of the object being tested. Although lasers have dropped in cost and complexity in recent years, speckle or optical noise related to the nature of coherent light continues to be a problem for most low-cost laser sources. Also, a laser with a 30 µm beam diameter cannot resolve items smaller than 30 µm without complex processing.

    Perhaps the greatest challenge using a laser triangulation system is its dependence on multiple mechanical systems. Laser triangulation requires high-precision scanning mechanisms (usually spinning mirrors) and precise stage controls to deliver full 3-D data. A failure among any one system can halt the inspection system. While fabs contain some of the most complex machinery in the manufacturing industry, any addition to the complexity can be a drawback. Simplicity reduces operational costs and reduces production downtime related to maintenance.

    Scanning systems take longer to inspect a single part than systems that process a wide field of view. Scanning systems also require that the part be placed carefully in relation to fiducial marks before scanning, adding to system cost through a vision-guided pick-and-place support system.

    Stereovision systems, composed of two charge-coupled device (CCD) cameras linked to dedicated image processing hardware, provide larger fields of view but also add complexity because of the need for multiple imagers. These systems take several pictures of a single part simultaneously. Based on small variations between the same pixel location in different images, image-processing boards determine the X, Y and Z position of all points within the field of view. High-resolution inspection using stereovision requires either interpolation of image data smaller than pixel sizes or high-numeric aperture optics for each of the cameras, adding system costs, vibration issues and complexity. Calibration of multiple camera heads on a single field of view also increases integration time and complexity, while increasing potential operational and maintenance operations.

    Moiré Interferometry
    Moiré interferometry is an accepted method for reducing calibration requirements while boosting resolution of automated inspection systems. For years, interferometry has been used in many industries, including electronics, as a high-precision inspection technique. In the past, however, systems that offered the highest resolution tended to be the slowest, typically using a pair of scanning laser beams – one for reference, one for measurement – and collecting precise Z-coordinate data based on the phase difference between the two wave fronts.


    Figure 2. Unlike fringe skeletization, which projects a grid on the object under test, FMI collects complete volumetric data for each pixel (volume pixel acquisition) based on phase information contained in the beating, or frequency mixing, of light passing through multiple gratings.
    Click here to enlarge image

    Finding a simpler system with the same resolution led to system designs that replaced the laser with a noncoherent light source coupled to a projection grating. This fringe skeletization technique projects a series of lines on the component surface. Distortions in the projected lines indicated height along the Z-axis relative to a reference plane, but these systems lacked the resolution required by the electronics industry. Further enhancements led to Moiré interferometry, where a second grating was introduced in front of the camera.

    Passing light through two gratings produces a Moiré interferometric pattern similar to the effect one sees while looking through two chainlink fences. By observing the distortions of the Moiré pattern, inspection systems can deduce the Z-coordinate relative to a reference plane for each pixel with higher resolution than skeletization and without processing overhead. However, the algorithms and mechanical systems needed to extract both 2- and 3-D data using a Moiré interferometric approach typically have been too slow for high-speed inspection of semiconductors.

    FMI
    The next step in IC package inspection was combining the best of fringe skeletization and Moiré interferometry to create FMI. A modular system was designed for integration into existing QFN or similar package circuit test equipment, or as a stand-alone on-line or off-line inspection system. It simplifies the mechanical systems while optimizing load sharing of the algorithm among multiple microprocessors.

    This system uses one digital CCD camera positioned directly over the part or tray to accommodate the widest possible field of view and limit false rejects because of occlusion of the field of view by variations or structures on the package surface. Simple white light is delivered to the object under test at a 30° angle off the vertical axis through fiber optics. A servo-controlled grating is positioned in front of the light aperture. The grating is moved and an image is acquired four times per inspection cycle in less than 150 ms. The four images are superimposed one atop the other using a workstation for fast volumetric pixel acquisition (Figure 2) and a complete X-, Y- and Z-topography for the entire field of view. AP

    Conclusion
    A new approach to package inspection – FMI – is suitable for the new no-lead micro packages, such as QFN. The speed (20,000 UPH) and resolution (4 to 5 µm) address the throughput and geometric requirements of these package types.

    *MLF is a trademark of Amkor.

    **FMI is a trademark of SolVision.

    Ronny Theriault, worldwide sales and marketing manager, can be contacted at SolVision, 2111 Boulevard Fernand-Lafontaine, Suite 130, Longueuil, Quebec, Canada J4W 2V6; (450) 679-9542; Fax: (450) 679-9477; E-mail: [email protected].