AIXTRON to Build Innovation Center: Week in Brief: 05/19/23

AIXTRON, a manufacturer of deposition equipment for the semiconductor industry, will invest up to €100 million ($107 million) to establish an innovation center. The center, to be located at its Herzogenrath site, will provide the company with 1000 m² of cleanroom space and enhanced capacity for R&D.

Illustration of AIXTRON’s planned $107 million innovation center. Courtesy of AIXTRON.

ENSCHEDE, Netherlands — QMWare and QuiX Quantum are collaborating to develop a fully integrated, hybrid quantum-classical platform at QuiX Quantum’s headquarters in Enschede, Netherlands. QMware and QuiX Quantum will co-locate the hardware onsite and integrate different computing paradigms (HPC and native quantum hardware) with shared memory access on the high-performance computer under a unified Linux operating system.

CLEMSON, S.C. — Clemson University broke ground on its Advanced Materials Innovation Complex, a $130 million facility designed to support development of advanced materials and workforce development. The 143,000-sq-ft facility will be designed for education and research. It is scheduled to be open at the end of 2025.

Rendering of Clemson University’s planned Advanced Materials Innovation Complex. Courtesy of Clemson University.

CENTENNIAL, Colo. — NUBURU, a developer of high-power and high-brightness industrial blue laser technology, delivered a blue laser powered area 3D printer light engine to its technical partner under a contract with the U.S. Air Force. The goal of the Direct to Phase II contract is to use the absorption advantages of the blue laser and combine it with the ability to project an image onto the powder bed using a Texas Instruments digital light projector to dramatically increase the speed of 3D printing of metal parts.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Laser Photonics, a developer of industrial CleanTech laser systems for laser cleaning and other material applications, formed a semiconductor division. The division will be focused on R&D and production of semiconductor capital equipment.

DENVER — Optical communications developer BridgeComm and cybersecurity company Taj Quantum partnered to develop distributed ledger-based post-quantum attack-resistant (PQR) network tunnels over an optical wireless link. The solution uses Taj Quantum’s blockchain-based smart contract authentication and will send the PQR encrypted data over BridgeComm’s point-to-multipoint free space optical wireless communications infrastructure. Together, the companies successfully demonstrated that the network will offer data rates of more than 7 Gbit/s and 10 concurrent individually PQR encrypted user sessions. In addition, the companies demonstrated dynamic resizing of multiple concurrent PQR encrypted users’ tunnels during atmospheric turbulence.

MUNICH — Rivada Space Networks and OKAPI:Orbits extended their partnership, which aims to secure the responsible use of space-based technologies. OKAPI:Orbits is providing satellite mission-analysis tools, including analysis and implementation of collision avoidance and de-orbiting strategies. The agreement brings together Rivada Space Networks’ interconnected high-speed, low-Earth-orbit satellite network and OKAPI:Orbits’ space traffic management software-as-a-service solution.

FREMONT, Calif. — Enablence Technologies, a supplier of photonic semiconductors, and Noel Technologies, a supplier of semiconductor process development and fabrication services to global semiconductor manufacturers, established a strategic partnership designed to substantially ramp up production of Enablence’s planar lightwave products at its Fremont wafer fab. The collaborators are specifically investing in etching, lithography, and deposition processing technologies designed to increase production of Enablence’s planar lightwave circuits — technology that Enablence said provides a higher volume of optical component integration in a decreasing footprint, while offering lower cost and power plus higher-capacity advantages for systems using wavelength-division multiplexing and coherent sensing applications.

FuturaSun’s planned 266,000-sq-m facility to be built in Huai’an, China. Courtesy of FuturaSun.

PADUA, Italy — FuturaSun will construct a 266,000-sq-m facility in Huai’an, China, to support the vertical integration of its photovoltaic supply chain. The investment will initially amount to €150 million and will be carried out in two phases. In a three-year span, once finalized and operational, the plant will have an annual production capacity of 10 GW of state-of-the-art N-type TOPCon solar cells.

NEW YORK — The core system of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope was recently delivered to Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colo., for integration into the Wide Field Instrument. Called the FPS (Focal Plane System), it serves as the core of Roman’s camera. The FPS is made up of a large detector array and its associated electronics. The detectors were developed by engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Camarillo, Calif. The Goddard team also developed the electronics and assembled the FPS. Each of Roman’s 18 detectors has 16.8 million tiny pixels, which will provide the mission with remarkable image resolution.

Principal technician Billy Keim installs a cover plate over the detectors for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Courtesy of Chris Gunn, NASA.

VIENNA — Projection display technology company TriLite added electronics company TDK to its manufacturing partner ecosystem. TDK will provide tiny micro-electromechanical system mirrors for TriLite’s Trixel 3 laser beam scanner (LBS). The Trixel 3 LBS enables augmented reality solutions for a wide range of consumer applications and makes smart glasses more readily available for mass market.