Company Announcements

Zeiss Microscopy sales fell 3.2% to €629 million ($828 million) for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2013, to make up 15% of revenues. The decline was due to restrained public sector investments in the US and Europe.

Tescan established a UK subsidiary in December 2013, including a sales and service facility in Cambridge.

In January, Ionscope named Dr. Ward Hills as CEO and Dr. Andy Richardson as CTO.

The University of Texas transferred technology for resonance-enhanced AFM-IR analysis with monolayer sensitivity to Anasys Instruments.

FEI’s 2013 sales grew 4.0% to $927.5 million (see IBO 2/28/14), including organic growth of 3.2%. Adjusted operating profit rose 4.2% to $157.3 million. Science revenue rose 9.0%, 7.3% on an organic basis, to make up 54% of revenues. Industry revenue declined 1.3%, down 1.0% organically, to make up 46%. Sales in the Asia Pacific Region and Rest of World, and Europe grew 11.5% and 10.6% to make up 43% and 29% of revenues, respectively. Sales in the USA and Canada declined 10.7% to make up 28%. The company forecasts 2014 revenues to grow 10%–14%.

Product Introductions

Bruker launched the Opterra Multipoint Scanning Confocal Microscope in December 2013. It has a seven-position pinhole/slid aperture for optimizing varying objective lens magnifications.

Park Systems introduced in December 2013 the Park XE15 AFM for imaging and measuring up to nine individual samples and sample sizes up to 200 mm x 200 mm.

In March, Park Systems launched the PinPont iAFM. It enables the acquisition of conductive measurement at any specific location on a sample at varying tip pressures with improved accuracy and precision.

Asylum Research released in January the Scanning Microwave Impedance Microscopy AFM technique for nanoscale mapping of the permittivity and conductivity of any material with minimal sample preparation. The probe technology, developed by PrimeNano, is available exclusively on Asylum’s MFP-3D and Cypher AFMs.

In February, Phase Focus introduced the Virtual Lens VL20 upright and VL21 phase microscopy systems for live-cell imaging, which utilize an acquisition and processing engine based on ptychography.

Rigaku launched the nano3DX x-ray microscope, featuring an ultrawide field of view, 25x larger volume than comparable systems and three x-ray wavelengths.

EDAX released three models of the new TEM Octane silicon drift detectors, with resolutions as low as 123 eV and optimization for low-energy x-ray collection.

EDAX introduced the PRIAS (Pattern Region of Interest Analysis System) imaging software that allows SEMs to obtain crystallographic, compositional and topographical contrast images.