More companies join Lab technology center

Three additional companies, for a total of six, have moved into the Tri-Valley Technology Enterprise Center at the Laboratory.

As of earlier this month, Reactive NanoTechnologies (RNT), WaferFlow and DIODETEC Inc. opened offices at TTEC’s facility, near the Lab pool.

RNT, headquartered in Baltimore, recently licensed technology from the Lab. Company CEO, Timothy Weihs — a former LLNL scientist — said his company will be working with LLNL for quite a while.

The Baltimore company has developed a new method of joining materials that it claims will revolutionize the current processes of soldering and brazing as well as open up new applications in the areas of metal-to-ceramic joining and the fabrication of laminated magnetic materials.

Weihs said its reactive foil joining methods can help manufacturers overcome current technical hurdles such as thermal mismatch in metal-to-ceramic joints; thermal damage to microelectronics; long cycle times in furnaces; and poor electrical conduction across joints.

DIODETEC is a manufacturer of solid state diode arrays used to power advanced laser systems. The company recently licensed the Lab’s Silicon Monolithic Microchannel-Cooled (SiMM) process to fabricate and package the diode arrays.

DIODETEC, headquartered in New Kensington, Penn., recently opened an office at TTEC.

"It’s a great service for a start-up," said Keng Leong, chief technical officer for the company. "It’s very useful because we spend so much time on site. We’ve been very pleased that we got the office space."
Manufacturing Engineer Ryan Shaffer said it’s less expensive than opening up a satellite office off-site because you don’t have the initial start-up costs of buying office furniture and equipment all the materials necessary to open an office.

"We don’t have to go out and buy copiers and computers," he said.

The third company, WaferFlow — started by four Tri Valley chip-manufacturing veterans — is still in semi-stealth-mode, focusing its development in the advanced semiconductor packaging market.

I’ve been glad that we’ve been able to attract this many companies in such a short time,’’ says Michael LaLumiere, TTEC’s executive director. "I’ve been at this just over six months and so far, considering we’re in a technology recession, we’ve done pretty well. I must admit, though, we’re primarily riding the coattails of the licensing group at the Lab. They’ve been doing a lot of deals so companies have just been naturally coming to us.’’

The first three private companies — ETARAN Instruments, SOX Systems and NanoLogic — moved into TTEC in January.

TTEC was created to help promote the success of local start-ups, small business and to act as a bridge between the local national laboratories and the region’s technology community. The center provides business services, facilities, training, and access to advisers and mentors in areas such as business operations and management, technical specialties, sales and marketing, financial, legal and banking.

In other TTEC news, Deepak Gupta — founder, senior vice president and general manager of PeopleSoft’s eCenter — has joined the TTEC Entrepreneurial Advisory Board. The board already includes: Brian Peters, CEO of Blaze Network Products; Trung Dung, founder of OnDisplay and CEO/founder of Fog-break Software; and Clyde Armstrong, CEO of Inovys.

The center also assists the Technology Commer-cialization and Transfer Programs of Livermore and Sandia labs by promoting and supporting lab commercialization efforts.

TTEC will continue its Entrepreneurial Seminar Series in June, July and August with subjects ranging from creating business plans to term sheets to accounting basics.

TTEC is a joint effort between the Tri-Valley Business Council, Livermore and Sandia labs, Pacific Gas & Electric Company, the City of Livermore, the office of Rep. Ellen Tauscher and the Department of Energy.