A small Russian innovation company has left its foreign rivals in the dust and could make more than a billion from a breakthrough microscope.

Recently, in an interview with “Expert”, academician Mikhail Alfimov discussed a project submitted to the Ministry of Science and Industry's innovation competition, noting that “Today, a lot of people are talking about nanotechnology, nanoprojects, and nanomaterials. Huge money is currently being invested in this area world-wide. But in order to consciously create something novel, scientists need a toolkit that helps research proceed efficiently”.
Nano- and biotechnology, promising areas for scientific and technological progress, are more and more often impeded by researchers' inability to conduct objective analysis of samples with nanometric dimensions. They cannot always make out the elements of new materials, semi-conductors, or cellular structures even through the most up-to-date microscope. To achieve a breakthrough in microelectronics, biotechnologies and new materials, microscopes need to have a resolution of ten and even a single nanometer, but should retain their speed of analysis and contact-free features. At the same time, they must avoid the destructive impact on a sample typical of ordinary devices.
Modern microscopes don't meet these requirements. The best light microscopes have a resolution limit of about 300 nm, and ultra-violet microscopes with resolution of up to 170 nm can damage biological samples. Electron microscopes give the right resolution but also have a destructive impact and operate only in a vacuum. As for nuclear microscopes, they operate slowly and only in immediate contact withan object.
However, a small Russian company, Laboratoriya Amfora or Amphora Laboratory, had developed a modulation interference microscope (MIM) without these shortcomings that gives a 3D image of objects ranging from 5 to 200 nm in size and a vertical-line resolution of 0.1 nm. If Amphora can manage to promote its MIM, it could capture up to 40% of the global market for microanalysis instruments, currently estimated at $5.8 billion.

Konstantin Indukayev calls himself a strongly mathematical theoretical physicist. Indukayev studied universal algebras and field theory at the Institute of Electromechanics, responsible for developing military space technology.
Working in the theoretical physics laboratory, Indukayev solved complex mathematical problems calculating the stressed assemblies of the anisotropic flywheel. Interested in the device construction, he proposed his own braking scheme via magnetic fields. Indukayev's device got a second wind as a high-precision drive. One such drive is still in operation on the Meteor satellite, turning its aerial with masterly precision. The drive didn't escape the military's notice, either. The large optical instruments required for powerful gas-dynamic lasers were used in anti-missile systems. Indukayev, a specialist in field theory, was enlisted as a chief designer at the Machine Tool Construction Ministry, where he became seriously involved in high-precision production. He created a system of aerostatic guide spindles used in machines grinding high-precision metric mirrors for powerful military lasers. According to Indukayev, this system is about 15-20 times better than currently available drives and will be our springboard for future projects.
With the advent of perestroika, Indukayev set off on his own and founded a successful cooperative called Transmitter. A team of 6 people supplied high-precision machines to Soviet industry. The machines allowed them to bring the surface of metals, even metals like aluminum, to an optical state in just one pass rather than nine, as is usually the case, says Pavel Osipov.
Toward the end of the Soviet era, Indukayev, at the request of the Defense Ministry, developed and prepared for manufacture a optical device for tanks, the Progress. Scientists are still puzzled why the military chose the Agava-2 instead, as its resolution is 8 times worse than Progress and costs a lot more, $840 thousand versus $340 thousand.

In 1994, Konstantin Indukayev became head of the Nanotekh Company and accidentally found out about interference microscopes. These microscopes are contact-free and do not damage to objects, even live cells.
Although magnification of light microscopes has increased from 300 to 1,500 units since scientific microscopy was founded by Antony van Leeuwenhoek and Robert Hooke in the 17th century, a theoretical barrier, the so-called Rayleigh Limit, has stood in the way of further increases in resolution.
In search of the higher optical resolution required by new technologies, contemporary specialists in microscopy have had to resort to wide variety of tricks regardless of the expense involved. Karl Zeiss, a German company leading the world in microscopy, has spent over 1.5 billion German marks on a new class of instruments with resolution of 160-170 nm. Each microscope of this class costs $250-300 thousand.
Indukayev set a challenging goal for his team: to create a microscope that would have over-Rayleigh resolution even in the optical band and could measure both an object's geometry and the parameters of its material composition. According to Indukayev, after several unsuccessful attempts to improve the parameters of existing interference microscopes, he, together with professor Vladimir Andreyev, wrote a new set of equations. Indukayev and Andreyev have succeeded in explaining the nature of over-Rayleigh resolution and building a model of this phenomenon.

At an exhibition in Hanover, specialists in microscope construction, Leika Microsystems and Karl Zeiss, were astounded when they saw the possibilities of the still unfinished device.
German specialists were skeptical and came to Moscow with prepared and tested samples in order to verify Indukayev's microscope. They were completely shocked: a pilot unit sitting on a small table without vibration protection in a corner of a former coat closet (as a rule, microscopes are installed in basements where building vibrations are at a minimum) demonstrated parameters that exceeded the possibilities of ultra-violet microscopes by three times, though UV scopes cost a quarter of a million dollars, operate in a vacuum, and occupy ten times as much space. Though they failed to figure out how the microscope worked, the Germans knew. The Russian team had made a technological breakthrough, even if unfinished, and they offered to move the whole team to Germany where working conditions would be better.
“Western scientists are not very respectful of Russian inventions”, - Osipov admits. “Many developments have shadowy pasts, and they think perhaps the technology has been stolen. Therefore, it's easier to buy the whole team body and soul, like the Koreans once did with best microwave Russian specialists. But we decided that we would build a pilot and start production ourselves. So we tightened our belts and got to work.

The company's engineers were missing one vital element for the final version of the project: a laser that met requirements for stability, low noise, and high coherence while remaining small and reasonably priced. Unexpectedly, they found their laser in Russia.
It's a tiny laser, and we have faith in it. It is stabilized; if something goes slightly wrong, we adjust temperature by three hundredths of a degree, and it works without any problems.
The specifics of microlaser production forced scientists to tackle the problem of processing crystals with nanometric precision. Indukayev\u8217\'92s experience in developing precision drives came in extremely handy. It moreover fell into the framework of yet another Amphora project to build nanometric drives to guide precision manufacturing.
The first device Amphora created was a press to assemble microlasers. It sets the parallelism of a microlaser's resonator mirrors with nanometric precision. This process enhances the lasers' efficiency, increases their power, and most importantly makes the production process more predictable (today, a manufactured lot of green lasers varies from 20 to 600 mw).
Next will come devices for precision cutting and polishing of microlaser crystals to significantly increase their manufacturability, economy, and radiation output parameters. These devices will also come in handy in assembling Amphora's next-generation interference microscopes, which will give the company new competitive advantages on the rapidly expanding nanotechnology market.

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