Germanium dicing expertise is in demand

Loadpoint is to dice infra-red filters to be incorporated into the Mars Climate Sounder.

Loadpoint has been asked to dice infra-red filters to be incorporated into the Mars Climate Sounder.

The MCS is one of the ultramodern instruments aboard the Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter, timetabled for launch from Cape Canaveral in August 2004.

On arriving at the Red Planet the craft will orbit at an altitude of 350km where it will spend two earth-years undertaking scientific research.

The MCS will take vertical profiles of atmospheric radiance; the data generated being used to plot the exchange of water between the surface and the atmosphere.

The filters are being produced by the University of Reading Infrared Multilayer Laboratory who asked Loadpoint to undertake the precision dicing of germanium substrates at its subcontract facility in Swindon, UK.

With over 40 years of experience in dicing, Loadpoint is one of the best established dicing machine manufacturers in the market.

Loadpoint Director John Sweet said of the company's wafer dicing subcontract service: "This type of technically sophisticated job is where Loadpoint's depth of experience in dicing benefits our clients in both production time and materials cost.

As we've been involved in the development of electronic components for so long we find we are the place that people come when they have new, difficult materials to dice, over the past few years we have built up a body of expertise with Reading University in germanium dicing.

These aren't the first Loadpoint diced parts to be sent into space and they won't be the last".

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