Daily News Briefs

Aixtron AG, an Aachen, Germany-based supplier of compound semiconductor equipment, announced it will install a GaN MOCVD mass production system at Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co. Ltd., in Suwon-City, South Korea. The AIX 2600G3 HT reactor will be used for the development and production of blue and white light-emitting diode devices. MOCVD, or metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, is a technique to grow thin film III-V compound semiconductors such as gallium nitride (GaN)-, gallium arsenide- and indium phosphide-based materials. These materials are used in devices such as light-emitting diodes, solid-state lasers, photovoltaics, infrared detectors and high-power/high frequency transitors.. . .Tokki Corp., a supplier of manufacturing equipment to the organic light-emitting diode (OLED) industry, Hitachi High-Technologies Corp., a Japanese trading company, and Universal Display Corp., a developer of OLED technologies for flat panel displays and other opto-electronic applications, announced they have installed a new OLED deposition system at Universal Display's facility in Ewing, N.J. The companies said the multi-chamber, semi-automatic EL VESS020 system -- the first of its kind to be installed in the US -- is designed to deposit a variety of organic and metallic films using vacuum sublimation and evaporative techniques.. . . Spire Corp. has been awarded a $100,000 Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to develop a more rapid method for the detection of plague organisms. Spire will initially design, construct and evaluate a prototype of a highly sensitive, portable optical instrument that would use fluorophores to identify the presence of plague pathogens in the body. Successful demonstration of the prototype's feasibility could lead to a Phase II program with funding of up to $1 million.