General company news
• Stion, a developer of thin-film photovoltaics, has raised $15 million in Series B financing. Founded in 2006, the firm is based on the work of Howard Lee, a leading researcher in nanotechnology and semiconductor materials and former group leader at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, US.
• Industrial Nanotech continues to roll out its Nansulate line of coatings that provide thermal insulation, prevent corrosion and resist mould. This week's customers include AmBev, the biggest brewery in Latin America, and an unnamed major US power company.
• Tegal, a manufacturer of plasma etch and deposition systems, has reported new bookings of $20 million in systems revenue. "Our backlog and new order momentum make us very optimistic about our prospects for later in the year and are very encouraging signs for our overall goal of reaching profitability," said Thomas Mika, chairman, president and CEO of Tegal.
• Tegal has established the Peter J Clarke professorship for the director of the California NanoSystems institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a gift of $350,000. The donation is being made by Sputtered Films, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tegal.
Licensing and acquisitions
• Harvard University has added "ALD coaxially coated carbon nanotubes as transistors" to its list of available technology for new product development opportunities. According to the university, the invention opens up the use of single-walled carbon nanotubes as the active heart of transistors for IC chips and for sensors.
• Nantero has provided license rights for its scalable carbon nanotube technology to Alpha Szenszor, a designer of molecular diagnostics chips. Alpha Szenszor is working towards portable disease testing that would be available through local pharmacies and allow anyone to test themselves with total privacy and at low cost.
• NanoSensors has extended its letter of intent to acquire DKL International, a supplier of passive detection technology for security and defence markets. "This extension is needed to provide the parties with additional time to finalize a definitive acquisition agreement and to allow the company the time to raise the financing to complete this transaction," said NanoSensors' CEO, Ted Wong.
Equipment
• Xradia has delivered a hard X-ray imager to Argonne National Laboratory's centre for nanoscale materials (CNM), joint developers of the device. "The nanoprobe will provide X-ray characterization at a spatial resolution of 30 nm, which substantially exceeds the optical limit," said Eric Isaacs, director of CNM.
• FEI has released its Phenom microscope that it claims bridges the price and performance gap between optical and scanning microscope technologies. FEI says that the device yields magnification up to 20 times higher than most advanced optical microscopes and provides affordable access to the nanoscale.