Tucson: Nikon Research Corporation Profile

Focus is on the little things

Nikon Research Corp.

knows smaller is better with electronic devices


By Dan Sorenson

ARIZONA DAILY STAR July 18, 2009

Say “Nikon” and most people hear “camera,” but Nikon Research Corporation of America has a local presence that often has more to do with your laptop than your camera.

A small group of optical engineers — most of them Ph.D’s from the University of Arizona’s College of Optical Science — work out of NRCA’s modest office and lab in a quiet Rancho Vistoso business park in Oro Valley.

They can’t tell anyone much more than that, because their work often has to do with product development, often involv­ing patented features, said Eric Goodwin, one of the three UA optical engineering Ph.Ds working there.

Some times those develop­ments involve Nikon’s famous camera lines, but more often they have to do with the less public side of the giant Japanese company that has to do with the equipment used to make chips — the silicon “brains” that do the magic in everything from computers to pacemakers, iPods and a million other electronic devices.

A great part of that always smarter, usually cheaper and more desir­able gadgetry is a result of miniaturization. The more brain power that can be squeezed onto the ever-shrinking silicon brains, the smaller and smarter the devices become.

The lines in today’s chip circuits are so fine as to make a human hair look like a sewer pipe. If you could see the smallest details — individual conductive paths — it would be like using Google Earth to zoom into Tokyo from, say, the Moon, or maybe Mars. The tiny chips have millions of those lines linking electronic circuits embed­ded in the silicon.

They are made in a process re­lated to photography, where the drawn circuits are shrunk and etched into the chips.

Nikon, says NRCA CEO Tom Novak, is the second-largest maker of the equipment used in creating those chips.

Any error in the optics used to make the circuits causes flaws.

“Most of our business relates to the semiconductor side,” said No­vak in a phone interview from the Nikon research unit’s U.S. headquarters in Belmont, Calif. “We do have some cam­era (projects), but most relates to the semiconductor side.”

He said Nikon maintains an operation here because of the research, training and other resources available at the UA’s College of Optical Science.

“It’s definitely because of the University of Arizona,” said Novak. “It’s world renowned. As far as I’m concerned it’s the Number One optical universi­ty. … We wanted to be in close proximity to the professors and students. We use them as advisors from time to time.”

Novak said the NRCA’s low profile in the Tucson area and his reluctance to discuss specifics of research here is deliberate.

“There’s a lot of competition in our business; we have to be careful what we say. There’s guys looking at every word to try to figure out what we’re do­ing,” Novak said.

“Nikon has ideas and we’ll test them out (here),” said No­vak. “And we’ll try to prove whether it makes sense, or how feasible it is. We rarely do anything for final design. We’ll do proof of concept. And nor­mally, Nikon in Japan will do final” product development.

But things here are going well enough that NRCA is doubling the size of its Oro Valley operation, expanding into a space next door, roughly doubling its space, Goodwin said.

Novak said there will be enough space for visiting Nikon engineers from Japan and for a classroom for cus­tomer training.

Contact reporter Dan Sorenson at 573-4185 or dsorenson@azstarnet.com.