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 square foot, 150-employee North American headquarters in Peabody, Massachusetts, in March.

For the half year ended March 31, Carl Zeiss Semiconductor Technology Group sales rose 16% to €527 million ($775 million). Microscopy Group sales rose 4%, 9% excluding currency effects, to €168 million ($247 million).

In May, Carl Zeiss acquired a 51% stake in ANASPEC, a former distributor for the company’s Nano Technology Systems Division with offices in South Africa and Australia. ANASPEC employs 17 people and has revenues of approximately ZAR 7 million ($865,000).

In April, FEI took an equity position in Imago Scientific Instruments, with an option to purchase later, and is collaborating to distribute and market Imago’s LEAP product line.

In April, Nikon Instruments began direct sales and support in Southern California and the Rocky Mountain Territories. Nikon retained most of the sales representatives of its former distributor, AG Heinze, and will open a Southwest Regional office in Orange County, California.

In June, Nikon opened a microscopy imaging center at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

In June, Nanosurf AG opened a US subsidiary in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

Product Introductions

Leica Microsystems introduced the Leica TCS LSI (Large Scale Imaging) macro zoom 3D confocal microscope for in vivo imaging of large samples.

In May, EDAX, an AMETEK company, launched the Apollo XV silicon drift detector for X-ray microanalysis.

Agilent released a Multiwavelength Laser Combiner for microscopy applications.

ASPEX introduced the Metal Quality Analyzer for Steel, a fully integrated scanning electron microscope (SEM)/energy dispersive spectrometry system for counting, sizing and identifying impurities in steel specimens collected from the ladle or final product.

JEOL Japan launched the JIB-4600F multibeam milling/imaging system, featuring resolution of 1.2 nm at 30 kV.

In May, JEOL Japan released the JSM-7600F thermal field emission SEM, capable of the simultaneous acquisition of four different image types.

Veeco launched the HarmoniX atomic force microscope technique, enabling the simultaneous, real-time acquisition of images and quantitative material property maps.