News in brief: Filtronic, Motorola, Kopin etc
Filtronic is to sell certain assets of its Filtronic Solid State business, in Santa Clara, California, to Teledyne Wireless for approximately US$12m. Filtronic Solid State designs and manufactures customized microwave subassemblies for electronic warfare, radar and other military applications.
Filtronic will retain its Solid State compound semiconductor business in California, which will employ 19 people. Filtronic acquired the Solid State business from Litton, which included a GaAs fab, in 1998. After opening its 6-inch GaAs fab in the UK, Filtronic decided to close the Santa Clara facility.
Motorola files IPO statement for semiconductor spin-off
Motorola is proceeding with plans to spin off its Semiconductor Products Sector (SPS) and has filed a registration statement for an initial public offering (IPO) with the Securities and Exchange Commission under the temporary name SPS Spinco Inc. Up to $2 billion of stock could be sold.
Kopin and Denselight receive certification
Kopin has achieved certification to the ISO 9001:2000 standard for its two high volume III-V production facilities in Taunton, Massachusetts, which manufacture GaAs HBT epiwafers. Kopin has been ISO-certified since August 21, 2001 and received upgraded certification this month.
DenseLight Semiconductors of Singapore, a manufacturer of InP-based active optoelectronic chips and photonic integrated circuits (PICs), has successfully obtained the ISO 9001:2000 certification for the design, development and manufacture of photonic devices.
MKS Instruments opens Shanghai office
MKS Instruments, which sells instruments, components and sub-systems to power, measure, control and monitor gas-related manufacturing processes, has opened a new Shanghai office to expand its local support in China. The office includes a calibration center and spare parts warehouse and has provisions for customer training.
OMI appoints distributor
Optical Metrology Innovations has appointed LOT Oriel as its exclusive distributor for Europe. LOT Oriel will market two OMI products: Omistrain, a tool to measure and diagnose 3-D thermomechanical deformation and strain-related reliability issues in electronic and photonic device packages and Omiprobe, a system using photoreflectance spectroscopy for in-line characterisation of epitaxial wafers.
