| |
For
Immediate Release:
Press Contacts:
Ron Kolb/LBNL: 510-486-7586
Corinne Fandel/AXSUN: 978-262-0049 Ext. 133
AXSUN-BERKELEY LAB PARTNERSHIP WILL
ENABLE SMALLER, FASTER OPTICAL NETWORKING IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS
Berkeley, Calif. and Billerica, Mass. — June 15, 2001 — X-rays
produced by the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) will play a key role in enabling
AXSUN Technologies to fabricate advanced MEMS structures used in
the assembly of integrated photonic products.
The critical first step of creating miniature molds for micro-structure
components takes place in a beamline at the ALS, one of the world's
leading producers of soft X-rays. The beamline was built exclusively
for AXSUN Technologies, of Billerica, Mass., and was dedicated
today by the laboratory and company officials. It marks the first
time that a private company has paid for an ALS beamline for its
own use.
"It's a win-win for both parties, and illustrates the great
value of public-private partnerships," said Charles Shank,
Director of Berkeley Lab. "The output of this beamline will
help address one of our nation's biggest telecommunications challenges,
and
at the same time, AXSUN's support will increase our capacity to
deliver on other scientific missions." Dale Flanders, President
and CEO of AXSUN, said, "AXSUN has been working with the Berkeley
Lab since before the company's founding in 1999, and we are pleased
to be extending our partnership to include the operation of an
AXSUN beamline. We believe that the relationship between the Berkeley
Lab and AXSUN will serve as a model for future commercialization
of dual use technology."
AXSUN, which has been in operations since 1999 and opened a West
Coast manufacturing branch in Livermore this year, is a developer
and manufacturer of photonic subsystems for optical networking.
Their products address a major obstacle in optimizing the performance
of fiber-optic networks that power the Internet: specifically to
offer complex, integrated subsystems that occupy smaller footprints
than today's bulkier, discrete versions.
AXSUN's products, such as its optical performance monitor, are
designed to manage optical networks through the integration of
advanced MEMS devices with a wide range of supporting optical functions.
AXSUN's subsystem products are one-tenth the size of those built
by hand, using bulk optics methods. The result is higher levels
of performance and functional density while consuming less power
and circuit board space.
Key to this process is the production of micro-alignment structures
used to mount optical elements such as the lenses to the optical
equivalent of a circuit board. That's where the Advanced Light
Source beamline comes in.
The ALS has proven to be the ideal vehicle for enabling a process
called LIGA, a technology developed in Germany that uses X-ray
lithography instead of conventional metal machining to create tiny
metal structures with sub-micron precision.The ALS X-rays are exposed
to an acrylic sheet, which is bonded to a silicon wafer containing
a mask of the LIGA structures. After the X-rays hit the mask, the
acrylic is etched in a manner that creates precise molds of micro-alignment
structures. Dale Boehme, Director of LIGA Technology for AXSUN,
said, "The ALS is a great synchrotron source for performing
LIGA X-ray exposures because it provides maximum power radiated
at energies ideal for exposing PMMA molds."
The exposed acrylic wafers will be sent to AXSUN's Livermore foundry,
where they will be chemically processed, electroplated, lapped
and polished, and released from the substrate. This wafer scale
process creates thousands of alignment structures on a single 3-inch
wafer. The structures are then assembled into the photonic platforms.
The 14,000 square foot office and manufacturing facility at 7693
Longard Road in East Livermore opened in March, and will serve
as AXSUN's West Coast headquarters and LIGA fabrication hub. AXSUN
executed a licensing agreement last year for certain LIGA process
technology with Sandia National Laboratory, another DOE facility
in Livermore, and is continuing to work with Sandia as a research
and development partner.
Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source is a national user facility
that generates intense light for scientific and technological research.
As the world's brightest source of ultraviolet and soft X-ray beams
— and the world's premiere third-generation synchrotron light source
in its energy range — the ALS welcomes researchers from universities,
industries, and government laboratories around the world. The U.S
Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences funds it.
Contributing to the construction of the AXSUN beamline at Berkeley
Lab, under the technical direction of Howard Padmore and project
management of Jim Krupnick, were William Thur and Sergio Gavidia.
Padmore said, "The path to an industrial LIGA facility at
ALS started in 1994 with the programs on two existing time-shared
beamlines. The use of LIGA for a dedicated industrial production
facility is something that the ALS management strongly backed over
the years. It is particularly satisfying to see this project come
to fruition working with Dale Boehme at AXSUN, who was responsible
for much of this early development work."
Berkeley Lab is an unclassified scientific research laboratory
managed by the University of California for the Department of Energy.
Back
© AXSUN Technologies |
|
About AXSUN Technologies
AXSUN Technologies, established in 1999, has developed a revolutionary photonic
packaging platform capable of integrating nearly any combination of optical
devices. The company applies this platform to the manufacture of a new class
of photonic subsystems including the industry's smallest, high performance
optical performance monitors. The company's agile optical products are central
to the transformation of the Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) infrastructure
from an inflexible, constrained network to one that is agile and programmable
at the optical layer. More information about AXSUN is available at www.axsun.com. |
|
