Kyoto, Japan 1/28/19—HORIBA Instruments has purchased MANTA Instruments for an undisclosed amount. MANTA develops and sells nanoparticle tracking analyzers. The company has six employees. Applications of the technology include life science, semiconductor manufacturing and environmental testing. MANTA’s systems determine size distribution, number concentration, and particle and aggregate size as small as 10 nm.

The technology is based on Brownian motion. A HORIBA Scientific spokesperson told IBO, “The key advancement of this system is the ability to work with a very large dynamic range of scattered light intensity produced by differently sized nanoparticles coexisting in a polydisperse sample. It uses advanced optics, multiple light sources and very advanced software that does not require calibration standards or use refractive index.” Asked about applications, she said, “It’s great for many types of applications. Some of the more interesting ones are exosomes, micro-vesicles, other biological particles, protein aggregation, and viruses and virus-like particles.” HORIBA had distributed the company’s systems in the US since 2017 (see IBO 5/31/17).