Company Announcements

In January, Luxendo, the developer of the Single Plane Illumination Microscopy technology, raised €8 million ($8 million) in a Series A round. The company released two systems last year and plans to introduce a new instrument for quantitative fluorescence imaging this year.

In January, Leistungselektronik JENA licensed to Carl Zeiss Microscopy rights to two patents related to LED fluorescence excitation in microscopy. The license covers the North American sale of the technology.

CryoCapCell announced in January the completion of a €1.5 million ($1.6 million) funding from the Quadrivium 1 seed capital fund managed by Seventure Partners. The company is developing correlative microscopy technologies for using high-pressure vitrification. The initial application will be for EM in cancer research.

In February, Leica Microsystems announced an educational partnership with ASM International.

Leica Microsystems announced in February that John Ossi will represent the company’s microscopy solutions for forensic and government agency customers in Maryland, Washington, DC, and Virginia.

In February,Raith and the Microscopy business of ZEISS announced a sales partnership for the ZEISS ORION NanoFab helium ion microscope. Raith is a provider and manufacturer of systems for nanofabrication, electron beam lithography, focused ion beam nanofabrication, nanoengineering and reverse engineering.

attocube systems and SPECS Surface Nano Analysis announced a collaboration for quantum transport measurements at low temperatures. SPECS introduced a user friendly Nanomis Tramea system, allowing for the exploration of a very large phase space at cryogenic temperatures and high magnetic fields, 18 months ago.

Product Introductions

Thermo Fisher Scientific introduced in November 2016 the HeliScan MicroCT Imaging System for large-scale, high-fidelity 3D images of a sample for material analysis applications.

In December 2016, JPK Instruments launched the OT-AFM System, calling it the first combined system to provide optical tweezers and AFM in a single inverted light microscope platform. It features a specially designed OT-AFM ConnectorStage. Applications include cellular response, cell-cell or cell-matrix interactions, immune response and bacterial/virus/nanoparticle uptake processes.

JEOL introduced in January the JIB-4700F Multi Beam FIB-SEM System, featuring a hybrid conical objective lens, GENTLEBEAM and an in-lens detector system for resolution of 1.6 nm at a low accelerating voltage of 1 kV.  Sales of 20 units per year in the first year are projected.

In January, JEOL released the JX-8530FPlus Electron Probe Microanalyzer (EPMA), its third generation FE-EPMA, featuring an improved electron optical system and new software. Various X-ray spectrometers can be selected.  In the initial year of release, the sale of 35 units are expected.

In February, Oxford Instruments introduced the Cypher VRS Video-Rate AFM, calling it the first and only full-featured video-rate AFM.  It enables high-resolution imaging of dynamic events at up to 625 lines/second, corresponding to about 10 frames per second.

Oxford Instruments released in March the new, budget-priced SurfRider “HQ-Series” AFM probes, high-quality silicon probes exclusively manufactured by Asylum that can be used with all commercial AFM systems.

In March, Hitachi High-Technologies introduced the HT7800 Series TEM, featuring digital operation under normal room light conditions, a special ultra-resolution lens configuration, and new Image Navigation function. The company expects annual sales of 70 units.

Park Systems announced in February the availability of the single-click SmartScan software for its Park XE Series AFMs.