On the microscopic scale, the surface area of particles and materials has an important effect on their behavior. Since the surface of a material is the primary point of contact between it and the outside environment, this is where many chemical and physical effects take place. Combustion, dissolution, filtration, catalysis and other processes are sensitive […]

Company Announcements JEOL USA named Boeckeler’s RMC Products Division, a microtome manufacturer, as a distributor of its Cross Section Polisher sample preparation tool. More than 4,000 units of the Polisher have been sold worldwide. Carl Zeiss opened an SGD$30 million ($22 million) demonstration facility in Singapore in March. Carl Zeiss SMT opened its new 53,000 […]

Company Announcements FEI and the Foundation for Fundamental Research of Matter announced a five-year, €2.7 million ($3.9 million) joint nanotechnology research project to develop electron microscopes and focused ion beam (FIB) systems for single-atom imaging and processing of material structures. FEI opened its fourth NanoPort center of technical and applications excellence in Shanghai, China, in […]

New Orleans, Louisiana, played host to the 59th annual Pittsburgh conference and exhibition (Pittcon), which was held March 1–7 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Although Pittcon took place against a backdrop of escalating fears of a US recession, one would have never known it. Companies were upbeat about future business prospects and the […]

Atomic Spectroscopy Applitek, a Belgian firm, debuted the eXaminer a portable/handheld X-ray fluorescence (XRF) instrument, which should begin shipping in August or September at a “competitive” price. In November 2007, Brooks Rand began shipment of the Merx methyl mercury system, which uses GC and its AFS mercury analyzer to make a direct measurement of methyl […]

Founded in 1999 in Berlin, Germany, JPK Instruments AG is a supplier of atomic force microscopes (AFM) and accessories for life science research. AFM measures the physical, electrical and magnetic forces on a sample surface with subnanometer resolution. In life science research, AFM is used to image the surfaces of living biological samples under physiological […]

Surface science techniques provide microscopic analysis of surfaces and samples; together, they represented nearly $4.3 billion in 2007 sales. The individual technologies span an enormous range of sophistication, from light microscopes costing thousands of dollars, to complicated confocal microscopes and ultrahigh-vacuum surface analysis systems with price tags in the million-dollar range. The overall market is […]

Park Systems released the XE-NSOM/Raman AFM for near-field optical microscopy and Raman spectrometry, featuring Raman technology provided by Horiba Jobin Yvon. Leica Microsystems introduced the SD6000 Spinning Disk Confocal module for visualizing biological processes in live cells in real time. Oxford Instruments released the 50 mm2 Si(Li) transmission electron microscope (TEM) energy dispersive detector for […]

Inkarp Instruments and SciTech became exclusive distributors for JPK Instruments for India and Australia, respectively. Imago Scientific Instruments named founder and CTO Tom Kelly, PhD, president and CEO in September. Timothy J. Stultz, PhD, former CEO, was named chairman. In October, Asylum Research opened a subsidiary in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. In November, Asylum Research announced that […]