News and Press Releases

BILLERICA, Mass. -- Bruker Corporation today announced the closing of its acquisition of Center for Tribology, Inc. (CETR). CETR, a privately held tribology and mechanical testing company headquartered in Campbell, CA, with 30 employees, has now become a part of the Bruker Nano Surfaces division, joining the current AFM (atomic force microscope) and SOM (stylus and optical metrology) businesses. Dr. Norm Gitis, the founder and CEO of CETR, has joined Bruker as Vice President and General Manager of the new Bruker Tribology & Mechanical Testing (TMT) business.

Frank Laukien, President and CEO of Bruker Corporation, stated: We are very excited about the addition of CETR’s highly regarded tribology, mechanical testing and nano-indenting expertise and product lines. With these additional industry-leading systems, Bruker is continuing its commitment to provide the world’s most innovative selection of high-performance, applications-enabling instrumentation. We cordially welcome Dr. Gitis and our new colleagues.

“Our current customers are interested in materials structure and mechanical property relationships, and with nearly a 50% overlap between CETR’s customers and our own, we are delighted to add CETR technology to our common offering,” said Mark R. Munch, Ph.D., President of the Bruker Nano Surfaces division. “I am confident that the synergistic combination of CETR core competencies with our own AFM, optical and stylus instrumentation expertise will increase our market penetration while enabling our global customers to continually advance their research and products.”

About CETR

CETR was founded in 1993 to offer testing and consulting services to high-tech companies. Within a year, CETR started developing and manufacturing its own test equipment, and now is a worldwide leader in nano-mechanical and tribological test instrumentation, serving both basic materials research and industrial manufacturing in a wide range of fields, including the biomedical, petroleum, microelectronics, energy, and automotive markets. CETR, a privately held corporation located in Silicon Valley in Campbell, CA, was projected to have calendar year 2011 revenue greater than $10 million and EBITDA greater than $2 million. For more information about CETR, please visit www.cetr.com.

About Bruker Corporation

Bruker Corporation (NASDAQ: BRKR) is a leading global manufacturer of scientific instruments that address the needs of a diverse array of research and production customers in materials, chemical analysis, life science and pharmaceutical, biotechnology and molecular diagnostics research.  For more information about Bruker Corporation, please visit www.bruker.com.

Download complete Press Release and Cautionary Statement.

SOURCE: Bruker Corporation
Stacey Desrochers
Bruker Director of Investor Relations
T: +1-978-663-3660, ext. 1115
E: stacey.desrochers@bruker.com

This week CETR, Silicon Valley’s high-tech test equipment supplier, successfully shipped its heavy-duty tribometers UMT-3M to Cummins in Indiana, a major manufacturer of engines, and to ExxonMobil in New Jersey, a major producer of lubricants.

Since announcing the addition of heavy-duty UMT-3M to its popular UMT series of tribometers, CETR has been approached by a number of leading corporations worldwide for its procurement in application to durability and friction tests of engine components.

Major automotive manufacturers including Honda in Japan, Volkswagen and MAN in Germany, and First Automotive Works in China have purchased and begun operating the UMT-3M.

Major suppliers of motor oils, including ExxonMobil in Texas, Indian Oil Corp in Faridabad, Bharat Petroleum Corp in Mumbai, and China Petroleum in Dalian have purchased and begun using the UMT-3M for volume testing of lubricants.

Major suppliers of engine components, including Mahle Metal in Brazil, Robert Bosch in Germany, SKF in Netherlands, and NBC Bearings in India have purchased the UMT-3M for product development and verification.

Top academic institutes and universities involved in engine research, including Argonne and Idaho National Laboratories in the US, Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, Halmstad University in Sweden, Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis and GosNII Chemotology in Russia, Xi’an Jiatong University in China, Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi have purchased UMT-3M for scientific investigation of tribological behavior of advanced engine materials and lubricants.
 
The UMT-3M is the only tribometer worldwide which incorporates both fast linear reciprocation (up to 60 Hz) and rotation (up to 5,000 rpm) with the programmable temperature chambers reliably reaching 1,050C. It has a unique provision to test exhaust gases being re-used in those chambers. Moreover, it is the only tribometer with argon protection against sample oxidation at high temperatures, guaranteed to reduce oxygen concentration by 1,000-5,000 times (0.02 - 0.005%), depending on gas purity and flow.  

The UMT-3M can accommodate all three common tribology motion drives -- block on rotating ring, pin/ball on rotating disc and piston ring on reciprocating plate -- interchangeable in a minute. Its multi-channel data-acquisition can simultaneously monitor up to three forces in-situ, along all three axes, torques, temperature and humidity, wear depth, contact acoustic emission and electrical resistance, as well as take periodic optical images of the worn areas.

The wide acceptance of the UMT-3M for engine testing will enable numerous industrial corporations worldwide to develop better material and design solutions for the next generation of engines and lubricants.

For more information about test equipment and testing methods, please contact info@cetr.com.

CETR, Silicon Valley’s high-tech test equipment manufacturer, successfully installed a new tester for wafer probes and probe-cards at the Intel R&D facility in Hillsboro, Oregon.

President and CEO of CETR Dr. Norm Gitis announced at a luncheon today that a year-long test-equipment development and manufacturing project is complete. Undertaken by CETR in cooperation with Intel it resulted in the successful installation and acceptance of the most comprehensive tester to evaluate wafer probes, probe arrays and test heads (probe-cards). Dr. Gitis also reaffirmed CETR’s support for Intel in its use of the tester for breakthrough research and product development.

Intel approached CETR for this special design at the end of 2009 and assigned a team of scientists and engineers from its Hilsboro division to guide the development process. CETR’s engineering team modified its world-renowned mechanical and tribology tester UMT within less than a year to accommodate Intel’s requirements for the most advanced probe evaluation tool.

The new tester is named ASPECT, Advanced Sort Probe Evaluation & Characterization Tool. It is based on CETR’s UMT-series testers, used for testing tribology and mechanical properties of advanced materials and devices all over the world.

In previous years CETR sold its UMT testers to Intel suppliers of wafer sort probes, for testing single probes. The newly-developed ASPECT can accommodate not only single probes, but also probe arrays and probe-cards (test heads).

Utilizing  UMT’s multi-channel data-acquisition electronics and software, ASPECT can simultaneously monitor up to three forces (in three directions) between the probe and the wafer pad, displacement and deformation of the probe, electrical voltage, current and resistance, temperature and humidity, as well as optical images.

Utilizing UMT’s patented sensors, ASPECT can monitor a vertical load and lateral friction forces within wide ranges from micro-Newtons (for a single probe) to kilo-Newtons (for probe-card). 

Utilizing UMT’s multi-channel motor-control electronics and software, ASPECT can simultaneously control multiple motions of the wafer (linear in both lateral directions and rotary around a vertical axis) and probe (linear vertical). It allows for precise alignment of probe and contact pad on the wafer, and for mapping of an unlimited number of test positions on the same or different dies or between multiple samples using either recipe or optical images.

In addition to UMT’s down-looking digital optical microscope for precision positioning, ASPECT can simultaneously have three more advanced microscopes, two lateral oblique ones to observe in-situ the engagement and disengagement processes between the probe and the wafer, and an up-looking microscope to periodically observe the probe surface for cleanliness. 

Utilizing UMT’s computerized environmental control, ASPECT can optionally control wafer temperatures from -25 to 125 ºC and humidity from 1 to 99% RH.

In the first half of 2011, CETR plans to offer ASPECT to other leading semiconductor manufacturers and their suppliers. 

CETR, a Silicon Valley based high-tech test-equipment manufacturer, has joined a growing list of companies helping injured soldiers returning from war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

President and CEO Dr. Norm Gitis announced at the Thanksgiving luncheon today that, after a year of research, development and testing, the project undertaken by iWalk and CETR has resulted in the successful prosthetic device PowerFoot. It allows leg amputees, such as soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, to walk and run normally. Dr. Gitis expressed his happiness at helping wounded soldiers, many of them young men and women with bright future ahead of them. He reaffirmed CETR’s commitment to using its leading expertise in testing and optimizing tribology and mechanical properties to help beneficial causes such as prosthetic legs.
 
The tests and discussions at CETR started at the end of 2009 and involved a team of scientists and engineers from both iWalk, founded by the visionary Professor Hugh Herr of the MIT Biomechatronics Group, and CETR. CETR modified its world-renowned advanced tribometer UMT-3 to accommodate the bushing-type and screw-in-nut type bearings in the iWalk’s prosthetic lower leg and to replicate the challenging static and dynamic stresses they have to bear in real life.  Numerous parameters of the leg’s motions were taken into account to develop a unique instrument and effective testing method that allowed for the precise evaluation of the durability and reliability of the PowerFoot.

At the beginning of the testing period, most of the bearings could not survive the stresses. Within six to nine months, the designs and materials were improved to the point where all the bearings reached sufficient durability and reliability.

The joint efforts have yielded a great success.  On November 18, Reuters issued its first press release about the PowerFoot. It was successfully implanted on the first dozen young soldiers, all of them happy to regain their normal leg activities. The PowerFoot BiOM is the first prosthetic lower leg to replace lost muscle function and allow amputees to walk naturally.  It uses sensors and a motor to propel the foot through each step, keeping walking as simple as with natural legs. Unlike passive prosthetic feet that return only a part of the energy of a biological limb, the reflexive action in the BiOM returns 100% of the energy while accommodating for real time terrain changes, thus normalizing the individual's gait dynamics. The BiOM senses the ankle’s position and forces in real time and reacts seamlessly to stairs and slopes. Built-in sensors and microprocessors enable the PowerFoot to mimic the natural way that the foot, ankle, tendon, and calf muscle work together, storing and releasing energy by using an actuator and spring assembly.
The Veterans Administration has approved the PowerFoot for use in its hospitals. Within several months, iWalk intends to start offering this device to many more amputees. CETR continues to work closely with iWalk on further device optimization and testing in volume production.

For more information about the PowerFoot, please contact iWalk at www.iwalk.com;
also see www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7430786.html.

CETR has been offering an AFM option for its tester for the past five years. In the UMT configuration, the AFM head is used with a fast-exchange fixture as an interchangeable module with a mechanical head. In the Apex configuration, the AFM head is used in parallel with the mechanical head, with programmable automatic sample movements between them.

After working with several American and European AFM suppliers, CETR is happy to announce a strategic partnership with Nanosurf, one of the leading European producers of atomic force microscopes for nano-imaging. Nanosurf will provide its AFM components for CETR’s nano-material testers and indenter/scratchers (UMT and Apex).

“Nanosurf’s compact and easy-to-use AFM, the Nanite, is a perfect fit for our product lines”, says Dr. Norm Gitis, President of CETR, “and will result in better measurements and a much improved user experience for our customers”.

Nanosurf’s Head of Marketing & Business Development, Dr. Robert Sum, adds, “The automation and integration possibilities of the Nanite make it an obvious choice for 3rd party system integration and OEM deployment — a market that we at Nanosurf are pushing more and more”.

The new module for CETR testers is definitely benefiting our customers, materials and thin films researchers all over the world.

Please contact CETR to schedule a tester demonstration or request additional information.

CETR is pleased to announce its participation in following conferences during Oct-Dec 2009

CMRS: OCT 15-17 Su Zhou, China

IJTC : Oct 19-21 Memphis, Tennessee

SMT-23 : Nov 2-5 Chennai, India

AVS : Nov 18-13 San Jose, CA

MRS Fall: Nov 30 - Dec 3 Boston, MA

ICANN: Dec 9-11 Guwahati, India.

Please come visit us at these conferences.

CETR is pleased to announce its participation in three conferences during April 2009:  Materials Research Society (MRS), Wear of Materials (WOM) and International conference on Metallurgical Coatings and Thin Films (ICMTF).

MRS:  Apr 13-17, San Francisco, booth # 213

WOM:  Apr 19-22, Las Vegas                

ICMCTF:  Apr 27-30, San Diego, booth# 2

Please download our conference schedule and come visit us at these conferences.

MEDIA CONTACT

Vishal Khosla
CETR
408-376-4040
info@cetr.com

CETR announced this week the launch of its newest test instrumentation – “Apex”.

Apex is the next generation nano-mechanical test instrument providing industry-leading sensitivity, control and unmatched performance. The tool comes with two interchangeable modules - Nano indenter (NH-3) and Micro indenter (MH-2). The modules can be easily interchanged for Nano and Micro range mechanical tests.   
Optional imaging modules include integrated AFM, 3D Profiler and a High magnification optical microscope. They image the sample immediately after the test without its removal.  
 
Both NH-3 and MH-2 modules can be used to indent (to measure hardness, Young’s modulus, Von Mises Stress, etc.) or scratch the material (to do scratch adhesion, scratch-hardness) as well as wear and friction at nano and micro scales.
 
Apex has been designed for thin-films, pvd & cvd coatings, hard coatings, microelectronics, magnetic and optical media, solar cells, MEMS, bio-films, etc. The tool comes with numerous useful features such as a large library of standards for calculating material properties, user defined algorithm and models, customized programmable recipes, advanced statistical analysis software for comprehensive fundamental materials research.   
 
CETR has already shipped the first two units; one to a leading university in Asia and other to a famous academic institute in Europe.

CETR announced that in December, 2008 it celebrated its fifteenth-year anniversary. 'It has been incredible fifteen years, serving materials and tribology research and testing worldwide. We have achieved this important milestone by providing customers with a competitive edge via effective innovative materials testing solutions. The customers appreciate it, and as a result, our tester sales have beaten records in each of the past three years, with the 2008 sales exceeding even optimistic expectations. As the materials industry continues to revolutionize, CETR will strive to remain ahead of competition', said Dr. Norm Gitis, CEO and President of  CETR at the day-long celebrations in San Francisco, which started at the sea cruise and ended at the famous Fairmont hotel in the evening.

CETR first opened its doors in October 1993, initially offering testing and consulting services to high-tech companies. Within a year, CETR started making test equipment, and soon has become a leader in mechanical and tribological test instrumentation, which serves both basic materials research and various industries such as biomedical, petroleum, microelectronics, energy, automotive, etc. The products range from nano-indenters to macro-mechanical and lubricant testers. CETR also has a full-service research and testing lab, one of the finest in America. Just recently CETR announced a launch of its new product APEX - the next- generation nano-mechanical test instrument, providing industry-leading sensitivity, control and unmatched performance.

After successful introduction of its high-load tester UMT-3M last year, CETR has been offering it for such diverse markets as tribology testing of lubricants and classical mechanical testing of materials.

This article was published in the March 2007 issue of Tribology & Lubrication Technology, the official monthly magazine of the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers, a not-for-profit professional society headquartered in Park Ridge, Ill.

'The proposed new standard will help the high-tech industry to collaborate in developing the standardized effective test procedures for CMP materials,' says Norm Gitis, Center for Tribology, who also notes that all interested parties are invited to join the task group. 'The work on the standard has been started and we are looking for collaborators from various industries and academia.'

CETR announced at the Japan Vacuum Show in Tokyo last week and is exhibiting at the Diskcon'04 in Santa Clara this week its newest test instrumentation.

Universal Nano+Micro Materials Tester (UNMT) for mechanical characterization of thin films, coatings and bulk materials for scratch, linear and rotary wear, adhesion and delamination, fatigue, friction, elastic and plastic deformations on the nano, micro and macro scales, including in vacuum and high temperatures.

Optional modules include an integrated nano-indentation head, atomic force and optical microscopes, micro-scratch/adhesion, micro-tensile/compression/fatigue, micro+macro tribometer (pin/ball-on-disc, reciprocation/fretting tester, block-on-ring), with close-loop servo-control of loads and displacements, simultaneous measurements of friction coefficient, wear depth, deformation/displacement, temperature, contact acoustic emission and electrical resistance.

The UNMT has been designed for biomedical, microelectronics, nano-films and other industries, as well as for fundamental materials research.

CETR is proud and excited to introduce to the worldwide community of engineers and scientists in the fields of materials, thin films and tribology its new international branch in China.

CETR China Office has just been established in the dynamic city of Shanghai to support our customers in the fast-growing Chinese R&D instrumentation market. CETR's micro/nano mechanics & tribology test equipment has been successfully utilized at leading research institutions such as Metal Research Institute and Chemical Physics Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai Institute of Microsystems and Information Technology, Surface Engineering Research Institute, etc., top-level universities like Tsinghua, Beijing Science and Technology, Mining, JiLin, etc., and major industrial companies like First Automobile Group, etc.

'Following the successful promotion of CETR products in China, we are now taking the next step by establishing the necessary infrastructure to fully support our current and future customers in China,' commented Dr. Norm Gitis, President and CEO of CETR. 'This shall further strengthen the broad and increasing demand for our leading-edge test equipment in the technology and research sectors across this impressively growing country.'

In addition to CETR-brand products, the newly-established CETR China Office will utilize its well-developed marketing network in China for active promotion and services of complimentary products made by other companies in the fields of surface metrology, nano-instrumentation, nano-materials, semiconductor materials, thin film deposition. All products will be exhibited and promoted at all relevant conferences and exhibitions in China, Japan, and throughout Southeast Asia. CETR China will thus work hard to advance its business partners on the Chinese market.

The CETR China Office is managed by professionals with strong technical background in tribology, thin films, surface metrology, and scientific instrumentation, as well as strong marketing experience in both the US and Asia.

CETR looks forward to the continued success in serving customers worldwide in their test instrumentation needs.

Center for Tribology has shipped to the Chinese Academy of Sciences the first Micro-Tribometer with a ultra-high temperature chamber.

Within just a few months, development and production of a 850C chamber have been successfully completed. The chamber fits nicely inside the Micro-Tribometer (see the photo) and allows for friction, wear, scratch, adhesion and other materials tests, with simultaneous normal load, friction force and wear depth measurements, in a wide range of temperatures from room levels up to 850C.

The Micro-Tribometer is now offered with three levels of temperature chambers:

• elevated-temperature chambers up to 150C,
• high-temperature chambers up to 350C,
• ultra-high temperature chambers up to 850C.

All these chambers are available as upgrades for CETR tribometers in the field, for all three types of lower-specimen motions, linear (ball/pin/plate-on-plate,  piston-in-cylinder, and fretting tests), rotational around vertical axis (ball/pin/disc-on-disc tests), and rotational around horizontal axis (block-on-ring tests).

Recent increase in the acts of bio- and chemical terrorism require development of new measures for dealing with the suspicious substances in the mail, which appears to be a convenient channel for delivery of harmful and contagious substances to government offices, companies, organizations, high-profile individuals.

One such measure is irradiation of mail started by the U.S. Postal Service in Washington. Total irradiation of the entire mail circulating through the United States may be an unreal objective in view of its high cost and damages it can cause to many items in the mail. Another measure is utilizing biological detection devices. These devices require preliminary opening the closed postal envelopes, are both too expensive and impractical due to violation of mail privacy.

A mailroom worker just drops one or several (up to 5) letters of any conventional sizes into it, closes the door, after which fine powdered materials are extracted from the envelope without opening it and sucked into a powder detector. The measured data is automatically compared with a predetermined reference threshold. If particle count shows no increase over the threshold, the green light switches on and the door can be opened to remove the envelopes. If the threshold is exceeded, the apparatus will produce both sound and visible (red light) alarm signals, at the same time locking the door (to be opened with a special key by a supervisor). The inspection time is less than 10 seconds; up to 800 envelopes can be inspected within an hour. For higher mail volumes, an automated model will be provided. Extensive testing has confirmed efficiency and sensitivity of the MailShield(tm) apparatus for the typical mailrooms.

It is priced very affordably, at only $ 9,999 plus shipping, and is available for immediate shipment, including for a free-of-charge no-obligation 2-day trial.

CETR'S PROPRIETARY SENSING  TECHNOLOGY HAS BEEN NAMED ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT CMP METROLOGY  DEVELOPMENTS OF 2001

Campbell, CA,   October 12, 2001 -   Center for Tribology announced today that its sensing technology has  been recognized by Laredo Technologies as one of this year most important  developments in the wafer planarization metrology.  

At the  Annual Symposium 'Chemical Mechanical Polishing 2001', organized bythe  American Vacuum Society in the Silicon Valley Convention Center, San Jose,  October 11, 2001, the opening plenary talk by Tom Tucker, the industry pioneer  and former President of Westech Systems, now President of the reputable market  analysis firm Laredo Technologies, was titled 'Key Issues related to CMP  Market Segments'. In his  presentation, Mr. Tucker named CETR's proprietary Coefficient of Friction and  Acoustic Emission Sensing Technology among the four major metrology  developments of the CMP industry in 2001. He illustrated this statement with  experimental data, showing effective applications of this technology for  process control, consumables testing and copper/low-K integration.

Indeed, the CETR patented technology has been proven to work for CMP process monitoring. It can be utilized for adaptive process control and real-time adjustments of polishing parameters based on in-situ measurements of the coefficient of friction and high-frequency contact acoustic emission. It is effective for monitoring low-K material delaminations and micro-cracking during copper polishing, which is crucial for copper/low-K integration. It has already been implemented in a bench-top polisher used for functional testing of consumables, including pads, slurries, conditioners and retaining rings.    

Dr. Norm Gitis, President and CEO of CETR, commented that indeed, this leading-edge technology can be utilized on both production CMP machines and laboratory CMP testers, with the latter ones promising to become the standard instrumentation at every semiconductor fab. The bench-top testers can be used for both fast process development and consumables testing, thus saving thousands of test wafers and preventing yield problems in CMP.

Our 7-year old Center is the world-largest provider of tribology (that is, friction and wear) test equipment and testing services. Our world-leading expertise in tribo-metrology has just been utilized in the latest product - CMP Tester. It is based on the latest technological advances and is the most precision and unique instrument of its kind. This automated instrument is a must for CMP users and suppliers as the means for understanding, optimization and control of CMP processes, machines and materials.

CENTER FOR TRIBOLOGY HAS BEEN ONE OF THE TWENTY FASTEST GROWING PRIVATE COMPANIES IN SILICON VALLEY FOR TWO CONSECUTIVE YEARS

Mountain View, CA, October 30, 1998

Once again, Center for Tribology is recognized by The Business Journal as one of The Twenty Fastest Growing Private Companies in Silicon Valley.

The ranking is based on the total revenue growth in preceding three years. In 1997 ranking, which was based on the growth from 1994 to 1996, CETR enjoyed a 1,287 percent increase in revenues and secured the position of # 1 Fastest Growing Private Company in Silicon Valley.

In the 1998 list, which is based on the total growth for 1995-1997, despite the slowdown in the disc drive industry, CETR has managed to remain in the top 20 companies and is ranked # 17.

This 2-year success is the best result for any private company in the HDD industry.

Center for Tribology started in October 1993, offering consulting services to disc drive manufacturers. In February 1994, it opened the door of its testing lab, which has since been the only independent lab in the industry, providing reliability and tribology testing for disc/tape drives and components. In January 1995 CETR started selling tribology testers, and within a year has become the largest in the world supplier of advanced computerized tribology test equipment.

Among its customers are who is who in the high-tech industry: Applied Materials, Fuji Electric, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard, Hitachi, HMT Technology, IBM, Lucent, Maxtor, Mitsubishi, Quantum, Read-Rite, SAE Magnetics, Samsung Electronics, Seagate Technology, Toshiba, Western Digital, and many others.

CETR has been successfully diversifying its market by providing advanced test equipment, testing and consulting services to Fortune 500 companies including Castrol, Chevron, Corning, Dana, Dow Chemical, Du Pont, Ford, General Motors, 3M, etc.