Grumman Corp’s Electronic Systems division is collaborating with the US Brookhaven National Laboratory to develop a compact synchrotron for commercial orders by 1994, with deliveries in 1996. Grumman is working under contract to Brookhaven, but Grumman will use its own resources to develop an industrial-grade synchrotron which is planned to have improved reliability than the laboratory tool being built at Brookhaven. There will be similarities between Grumman’s offering and Helios, Oxford Instruments Plc’s synchrotron, but the company says that Helios produces a wavelength of 8 Angstroms, while the Grumman unit will have a 10 Angstrom wavelength. Grumman acknowledges that the success of Helios, installed at IBM’s East Fishkill, New York-based centre is crucial to chipmakers’ acceptance of X-ray lithography. General Dynamics is supplying the two superconducting magnets for Grumman’s Superconducting X-raylight Source, and the first will arrive in the first quarter of 1992, with the second being delivered a year later.
