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Other U.S.A. Companies.

We did not have sufficient time to visit any of the companies listed below. For completeness, we include the information we do have to hand.

• Orbit. Essentially a silicon foundry operation similar to Loral. They have made some detectors including a imager but, to date, none for low-light level scientific use. They do not have any plans to develop a thinning capability for their imagers. Several USA groups have on-going contracts with them for large area, un-thinned scientific devices.

  Our feeling is that they must have quite a way to go before being able to demonstrate suitable performance of astronomical-grade, thinned sensors.

• S.A.I.C. Science Applications International Corporation. This San Diego company is involved in producing a variety of imagers and offer a back-thinning capability. However the results we have seen so far appear only to have been made at room-temperature and it remains to be seen whether good scientific performance can be guaranteed in a low-light level cryogenic environment.

• David Sarnoff Research Centre. This ex-RCA laboratory produces devices under contract or as a foundry service. Amongst devices so far made is a back-thinned, imager, but the performance of this and their other devices has not been measured under low-light level, cryogenic conditions. They have expressed a wish to produce low-light level imagers and have quoted a price of for a 20-wafer foundry run.