Company Announcements

In April, Olympus named Hidenao Tsuchiya vice president and general manager of its Scientific Equipment Group in the Americas. He was most recently the division manager for the Life Science Business Division of the Life Science and Industrial Systems Group.

In June, Carl Zeiss entered into an agreement enabling it to offer Digital Surf’s ConfoMap surface-imaging and analysis software for confocal microscopes and compound microscopes for topographical research.

Nikon Instruments opened a Center of Excellence in STORM (stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy) at the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona, Spain.

Leica Microsystems announced in June the start of direct operations in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana.

In June, Hitachi High-Technologies announced that the Tokyo District Court issued a preliminary injunction against FEI’s sale in Japan of the Quanta 3D field emission gun system equipped with a probe and gas injection system with either platinum, tungsten or carbon deposition gas.

TESCAN announced that it expects 2011 revenues to grow over 36% to more than $30 million.

In June, the National Institute for Nanotechnology in Edmonton, Canada, opened the Hitachi Electron Microscopy Products Center.

NT-MDT announced that sales of its scanning probe microscopes doubled in the first half of 2011.

Product Introductions

In May, CAMECA launched the SXFive electron probe microanalyzer. The SXFive is available with tungsten and LaB6 sources. The SXFiveFE is available with an field emission source.

Leica Microsystems introduced the Leica TCS SP5 II Growth Confocal Imaging System for entry-level budgets. It offers six wavelengths to start and three detectors.

In June, Shimadzu released the SPM-9700 scanning probe microscope with new software for ease of use. The software allows the display of up to eight observation images and includes a three-dimensional display function.

JEOL introduced the Centurio energy dispersive spectrometer, featuring a new silicon drift detector that collects X-rays from samples at a solid angle of up to 0.98 sr from a detection area of 100 mm2.

Agilent, in collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, released in July the first commercially available capacitance calibration standard for atomic force microscope–based scanning microwave microscopy.

JEOL introduced the JEM-2800 high-throughput 200kV transmission electron microscope for process and quality control of mass-produced semiconductor and materials samples.