Instrument Firms Make Electronics Advances

Two scientific instrument makers have undertaken initiatives to advance the development, measurement, and characterization of electronic and solar materials. Agilent Technologies has joined with the University of Texas, Dallas, to form an electronics characterization facility at the Texas Analog Center of Excellence. The facility, which will be open to industrial and government participants, will support the emerging field of silicon millimeter- and sub-millimeter-wave integrated circuits. These new circuits will lead, for example, to devices for weapons scanning and air-quality monitoring, the partners say. Meanwhile, Bruker has acquired the assets of AIXUV, an Aachen, Germany-based firm that brings measurement technology in the extreme-ultraviolet spectral range. The technology will allow Bruker to advance high-resolution characterization of light-emitting diodes and high-dielectric-constant thin films as well as to monitor emerging extreme-UV semiconductor lithography techniques. Separately, Bruker released several new instruments at the Analytica 2010 instrumentation show, including CryoSAS, a cryogenic quality-control-analysis system using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy for “at line” analysis of silicon in solar cells.