Jan 23 2008
Lord Sainsbury of Turville, former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Science and Innovation, today dedicated the new £1.3 million clean room at AMETEK Taylor Hobson’s Leicester, England, headquarters. The new clean room, which consists of Class 7 (10,000) and Class 4 (10) areas, is equipped with the latest metrology instrumentation for micro and nano technologies (MNT).
The facility is an expansion of Taylor Hobson’s Centre of Excellence laboratory at Leicester, which provides measurement support, training and advice to UK manufacturing and research companies in the field of MNT through the CEMMNT (Centre of Excellence in Metrology for Micro and Nano Technologies) partnership.
Taylor Hobson, a recognized leader in the manufacture of ultra-precision measurement instrumentation, has partnered with the UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and four other globally recognized leaders in MNT (The UK National Physical Laboratory, QinetiQ, Coventor, and BAE Systems) in supporting CEMMNT, a five-year project to accelerate the commercial development of MNT technologies across the United Kingdom. DTI has provided £4.3 million of funding from the MNT Capital Facilities Programme to CEMMNT for the creation of four Centres of Excellence nationwide.
“We at Taylor Hobson are rightly proud of our ultra-precision measurement capability and believe that this superb new facility provides us with the opportunity to share our knowledge and experience with a broad cross section of industry,” commented Dean Westmoreland, Managing Director of Taylor Hobson.
“We have made a significant investment in the partnership with DTI to give industry greater access to state-of-the-art instrumentation such as our Coherence Correlation Interferometer and Form Talysurf PGI, both of which are class leading measurement instruments that provide the very best in sub nanometer surface measurement. Through our truly global network we have the ability to provide tailored metrology solutions not only to the UK, but on a worldwide basis, with trained accredited engineers throughout Europe, Asia, America, India and the Middle East” he added.
The worldwide market for nanotechnology is estimated to grow to £1 trillion by 2013. Nanotechnology promises smaller, cheaper, lighter and faster devices with greater functionality using fewer raw materials and consuming less energy. These devices range from antibacterial wound dressings to self cleaning windows.
Taylor Hobson currently spends a significant portion of its research budget at Leicester but also funds research at UK universities and is represented on international standards bodies as well. With over 20 years of experience in micro- and nano-scale measurement, Taylor Hobson recently announced the launch of its world beating PGI 2540 Profiler Instrument boasting 0.2nm resolution, which again pushes the leading edge of metrology forward.
Taylor Hobson is a leading manufacturer of ultra-precision measurement instrumentation for a variety of markets, including optics, semiconductors, hard disk drives and nanotechnology research. It is a unit of AMETEK Inc, a leading global manufacturer of electronic instruments and electromechanical devices with annual sales of more than $2.0 billion.