News Briefs

The microelectronics division of San Diego-based Jmar Technologies Inc., a developer of laser-based equipment for imaging, analysis and fabrication at the nanoscale, has been awarded a $603,000 contract to upgrade the Department of Defense's DMEA (Defense Microelectronics Activity) program's semiconductor fab process at the Advanced Reconfigurable Manufacturing for Semiconductors foundry in Sacramento from 5-in. silicon wafers to 6-in. wafers over the next six months. The DMEA program was established to prevent the microelectronics used in US military weapon systems from becoming obsolete before the weapons do. . . . AltaSens Inc. of Thousand Oaks, Calif., a supplier of high-performance, high-definition CMOS image sensors, has named Patrick Quinn as its CEO and newest board member. Prior to joining AltaSens, Quinn founded Wave7 Optics, a provider of fiber-to-the-premises equipment, and over the course of five years served as its vice president of business development, vice president of product management and vice president of integrated technology. . . . Silicon Genesis Corp. (SiGen) of San Jose, Calif., a provider of silicon-on-insulator process technology used in the production of engineered wafers with nanotechnology applications, has entered into an intellectual property license agreement with Shin-Etsu Chemical Co. Ltd. of Tokyo, Japan, under which Shin-Etsu will have rights to SiGen's NanoTec suite of technologies and will purchase SiGen's proprietary equipment. Shin-Etsu will use the licenses to manufacture layer transfer substrates for optoelectronic applications used in the HDTV, computer and handheld consumer appliance markets.