SCHOTT to Provide IR Glass for Air Defense Systems: Week in Brief: 04/14/23

Glass technology company SCHOTT (SCHOTT North America) was awarded a multimillion-dollar contract from a leading defense contractor for infrared glass. The order supplies glass for launch tube windows, a critical component of air defense systems provided to the U.S. Army. SCHOTT’s Duryea, Pa., facility will manufacture the specialty glass.

A SCHOTT worker shows U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, a launch tube window for the U.S. Army air defense system. Courtesy of SCHOTT.

SAN FRANCISCO — MetaVC Partners closed MetaVC Partners LLC, a $62 million fund that will invest in early-stage, hard-tech metamaterials startup companies. Investors in the fund include Corning, Gates Frontier, and JSR. MetaVC Partners’ current investments include Lumotive, Mangata Networks, Imagia, and Neurophos.

ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office awarded Blue Halo a base $45.7 million prototype Other Transaction Authority (with $30.2 million in options) for the development of the Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL) system. Blue Halo will provide an infantry squad vehicle-mounted 20-kW-class laser weapon to defend against unmanned aircraft system threats in the battlefield.

ST. LOUIS — Bruker’s biotech subsidiary, Canopy Biosciences, and Enable Medicine partnered to provide Enable Medicine’s advanced analysis pipelines for spatial omics data with the Canopy CellScape system for quantitative high-plex spatial biology. The partnership will add to the analytic capabilities of the CellScape system by providing options to use Enable Medicine’s advanced spatial analyses, including cluster analysis, neighborhood analysis, and advanced data visualization, as well as cloud-based computing, sharing, and data storage.

Canopy Biosciences’ CellScape instrument allows for detection and quantification of up to 100 or more protein targets with 182-nm resolution and 8-log high dynamic range imaging. Courtesy of Canopy Biosciences via Business Wire.

AUSTIN, Texas — Slingshot Aerospace, a company developing a sensor network to track satellites for spaceflight safety and orbital operations, is expanding its Slingshot Global Sensor Network’s low-Earth-orbit tracking capabilities. By the end of this year, Slingshot plans to deploy more than 80 new optical sensors, which include proprietary telescopes and ultrawide field-of-view sensors, bringing the total network to more than 200 sensors across more than 20 sites globally. The expansion will include two new Southern Hemisphere sites, with additional sensors being added to many of the existing sites around the world.

ENSCHEDE, Netherlands — University of Twente spinout New Origin secured €6 million ($6.6 million) from PhotonDelta to establish an independent photonic chips foundry to process silicon nitride chips. The funding is part of the contribution that the province of Overijssel has made available to PhotonDelta for a national photonics program. Last year, PhotonDelta secured €1.1 billion ($1.2 billion) in public and private investment to scale up production, build 200 startups, create new applications for photonic chips, and develop infrastructure and talent.

OXFORDSHIRE, England — Kistler Fiber Technology, a subsidiary of measurement company Kistler, established an office for R&D at Milton Park in Oxfordshire, England. The space will allow further development of the company’s optical fiber sensing technology used for electric vehicles and structural health monitoring.

TEMECULA, Calif. — Silicon photonics company Skorpios Technologies closed a deal to lease a fabrication facility in Temecula, Calif. The 450,000-sq-ft facility enables manufacturing expansion opportunities to support customer demand for Skorpios’ Tru-SiPh heterogeneous photonic integrated circuits as well as demand from its 200- and 300-mm customers. The company has begun phasing out production at its Austin, Texas, facility, and it plans to restart manufacturing operations by May 31.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Precision timing technology company SiTime will provide its precision timing technology to Lattice Semiconductor, a developer of FPGA technology. The SiTime devices, a cascade micro-electromechanical systems-based clock-system-on-a-chip and an Emerald OCXO or Elite X Super-TCO, are incorporated into Lattice’s new synchronization hardware development platform.

TOKYO — Sony Semiconductor Solutions (SSS) will make a strategic investment in Raspberry Pi. The minority investment cements the relationship between the two companies to provide a development platform for SSS’ AITRIOS edge AI devices to Raspberry Pi users.