Imaging & Detector Imaging Report

Roper buys Kodak's motion-analysis division and Redlake Imaging

Adding two new companies to its digital imaging portfolio, Roper Industries Inc. (Bogart, GA) has signed purchase agreements to acquire the Motion Analysis Systems Division (San Diego, CA) of Eastman Kodak Co. and Redlake Imaging Corp. (Morgan Hill, CA). The high-speed, digital-video-camera division of Kodak generated $47.5 million in revenue in FY1999 and was sold for approximately $51 million. Redlake generated $6.6 million and was acquired for $9.0 million.

Lockheed Martin puts business units on the block

Lockheed Martin (Bethesda, MD) has announced a major restructuring in which it plans to sell off eight operating units that specialize in components, including some that are optoelectronics-related. These include Sanders (Nashua, NH), whose products include focal-plane arrays and laser-countermeasure devices; Infrared Imaging Systems (Lexington, MA), a maker of uncooled IR imagers; and Fairchild Systems (Syosset, NY), involved in IR and visible imaging. According to Lockheed, these operating units are not consistent with the company's focus on systems integration.

NIST funds IR sensor on a chip

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (Gaithersburg, MD) has awarded an unspecified sum to Ion Optics (Waltham, MA) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, CA) to develop an integrated IR gas sensor on a chip intended for mass-market applications in homes and automobiles. Functions of emitter, detector, and filters will be integrated into a single device having an expected operating life of 10-20 years. The chip will sense carbon monoxide, natural gas, and other indicators of air quality.

Corning boosts display glass production capacity

By the end of next year, Corning Incorporated (Corning, NY) will double its worldwide capacity to produce active-matrix liquid-crystal-display glass substrates. The company says it has already begun to expand its facilities in Japan and Korea and that the first unit of new capacity will come on-line in January 2000, followed by additional units throughout the year. A new finishing facility will be started in Taiwan and should be completed in 2001. Corning will also use the capacity expansion in 2000 to commercialize a new glass substrate that is both lighter in weight and more rigid than existing substrates.

Stocker & Yale teams with Illumination Technologies

A strategic partnership agreement has been signed between Stocker & Yale (Salem, NH), a provider of illumination technology for the machine-vision and microscopy industries, and Illumination Technologies (IT; Syracuse, NY). The agreement allows Stocker & Yale to combine IT's patents with its own fiberoptic abilities to create illumination systems for machine-vision inspection.

NanoSciences merges with Vitrum Photonics

Micromachining specialist NanoSciences Corp. (Oxford, CT) has acquired Vitrum Photonics (Monroe, CT) through an exchange of stock. NanoSciences has developed a process for producing features in the form of holes with an ultrahigh aspect ratio in semiconductor materials; the process is intended for the production of microchannel plates and through-wafer vias.Vitrum Photonics makes 100% fill-factor microlens arrays from plastic, epoxy, quartz, and semiconductors for displays and other uses. Vitrum will be moved to the NanoScience Oxford facility.

Also in the news . . .

Advanced Photonix (Camarillo, CA) announced that Brock Koren has been elected to its board of directors and will serve as president and chief executive officer. . . . Datacube Inc. (Danvers, MA) is making available more than $300,000 in educational subsidies to colleges to reduce the cost of its imaging products and encourage students to explore image-processing technology.