News in brief: LNL, AmberWave, Evans Analytical
LNL Technologies has raised $7.1 million in seed funding from venture capitalists and members of its management team for development of its technology for monolithically integrated photonic chips.
LNL was founded in 2001 by a group of researchers from MIT. Its technology is aimed at the reduction in size of photonic ICs by reducing the radius of curvature of the waveguides on the chips. LNLs approach uses silicon-based high refractive index waveguides, which it says reduces the radius of curvature from about 1 cm to a few microns.
A second crucial development by the company is a low optical loss method for coupling light from an optical fiber into its silicon-based chips. Using silicon as the base material allows LNL to take advantage of the mature silicon IC manufacturing infrastructure that exists and also to more readily integrate photonic and electronic devices. The company says that it has demonstrated prototype devices produced with a foundry partner in Singapore.
LNL has also acquired the intellectual property and some of the staff from two start-up companies that went out of business in 2002. Nanovation’s IP surrounding its InP and silica-on-silicon technology was acquired in April 2002, while in late 2002, LNL acquired the IP of Optenia which was developing silica-on-silicon gratings for wavelength multiplexing and demultiplexing.
Mitsubishi to represent AmberWave in Japan
AmberWave Systems has made an agreement with Mitsubishi that will see Mitsubishi help to establish a presence in Japan for AmberWave’s strained silicon technology. Mitsubishi will work with AmberWave to license its strained silicon technology to Japanese IC manufacturers and will also make available test wafers from AmberWave to those looking to integrate strained silicon into their manufacturing processes.
Evans Analytical opens northeast laboratory
Evans Analytical, a provider of materials characterization services, has opened a new laboratory in Peabody, MA. Evans Northeast Analytical Laboratory (ENE) is celebrating its opening with an open house on January 16. ENE is the seventh facility in the Evans group’s growing global network of laboratories and the second on the east coast of the US.
The lab provides materials characterization and surface analysis services. The lab is equipped with a PHI quadrupole secondary ion mass spectrometer (SIMS), a Cameca magnetic sector SIMS, and a Technos 300 mm wafer-capable total reflection x-ray fluorescence (TXRF) system. ENE plans to add additional equipment as the laboratory expands.
