Founded in 1999 by former employees of Digital Instruments, Asylum Research is today an employee-owned, self-funded provider of atomic force microscopes (AFM). The company has grown from a six-employee firm with one product to the 65-employee operation it is today. The company develops the technology of their AFM systems in house and was the first company to introduce closed-loop technology, which provides greater control over moving to a point of interest in the middle of a scan, to the R&D market. “We brought closed loop to the R&D market . . . Unlike other AFM manufacturers, we actually rolled [out] our own sensor technology—these magnetic distance sensors called linear variable differential transformers—and we did all that in house with our own innovations. That kept our costs down and allowed us to bring this technology to the R&D market.”

Asylum Research offers three product lines in its MFP-3D family of open- and closed-loop AFMs combined with optical and confocal microscopes, as well as software, and AFM modules and accessories. The company’s latest product, the Cypher AFM, was introduced in 2008 (see IBO 12/31/08). A small-sample AFM system, the Cypher features a redesigned cantilever, the device that scans a sample’s surface. “We’ve actually miniaturized [the cantilever] by a factor of 10,” explained Dr. Cleveland. “This leads to a lot of benefits in both faster imaging speeds, lower instrument noise and higher resolution.” Within the broad application space for Asylum’s instruments, Dr. Cleveland noted that the company’s systems are popular for biology applications.

Dr. Cleveland credits the company’s service and support for R&D applications as a differentiator in the marketplace, especially when competing with large companies. “The AFM is market is something like 3,000 instruments [that are sold] annually worldwide. They typically sell for over $100,000. They’re complicated enough that you end up having a specialized sales force, specialized channels and the support is highly specialized.” According to Dr. Cleveland, 85%–90% of the company’s AFMs are sold to the academic market. As a result, many of the systems are sold for slightly different applications.

Therefore, the support must be specific to each research project. “It’s a market where throwing a bunch of capital or worldwide sales and marketing channels at stuff doesn’t help as much as you might think it would,” he said.

The company’s annual sales have grown since its inception, according to Dr. Cleveland, but last year was exceptionally strong, even though it did not begin that way. “In the first half of the 2009, you could really see universities put a clamp on spending, and I think to some degree the [American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)] loosened them up,” he said. Once the ARRA was announced, the company’s sales to universities immediately increased. In fact, the third quarter of 2009 was the company’s best quarter in its history, followed by record sales in the fourth quarter. But many of these orders were not directly funded by the ARRA. “I think psychologically [the ARRA] loosened up spending [by universities], but in terms of actual orders, we’re not seeing a lot. Some of the money is still out there and we’re hoping to see more, of course.”