A group of Chinese investors has offered €6 a share to buy Aixtron, valuing the German supplier of semiconductor equipment at about €670m, in the latest case of a mainland acquisition of a western industrial company.

Aixtron, which makes equipment used in LED lighting, said on Monday that it had agreed to a takeover by Grand Chip Investment, the German arm of Fujian Grand Chip Investment Fund. The Chinese group is controlled by Zhendong Liu, a Chinese businessman who owns 51 per cent of the fund. Xiamen Bohao Investment owns the remaining 49 per cent.

Under the terms of the agreement, Aixtron shareholders will be offered €6 in cash for an ordinary share, nearly 24 per cent more than Aixtron’s closing share price of €4.86 a share on Friday. The deal represents a 51 per cent premium over Aixtron’s three-month weighted average share price. Shares in the German equipment maker rose by more than 16 per cent on Monday after news of the agreement.

Aixtron said its legal domicile and headquarters would remain in Herzogenrath, Germany. It added that chief executive Martin Goetzeler and Bernd Schulte, chief operating officer, would remain in their jobs at the company.

Grand Chip Investment is expected to appoint four representatives to the Aixtron’s six-member supervisory board once the deal is complete. The takeover is still subject to shareholder approval and certain regulatory conditions being met.

Kim Schindelhauer, Aixtron chairman, said on Monday that the board members “fully support this transaction as it provides immediate value to our shareholders while also enabling Aixtron to bring their new products to market”.

The disappointing first-quarter results came just four months after the equipment maker suffered its worst day in 16 years upon losing its largest customer. Last December, Aixtron said Chinese client Sanan Optoelectronics had cancelled its orders, forcing Aixtron to cut its full-year sales guidance and sending shares down as much as 43 per cent in a single day.

Ammonium metatungstate used as the raw material of thin film substrate for semiconductor device will improve its property. Thin film grows on the substrate, the substrate material properties and characteristics of the substrate surface has a big impact on the film, because the film thickness is between nanometers to microns, the substrate surface is required for high flatness; The combination of film and the substrate is also a very important aspect, if the lattice mismatch, at the beginning of the film formation stage will form a long transition area. The wide application of semiconductor device makes ammonium metatungstate has a prospect market and is becoming an important material in emerging industry.

Thorium tungsten electrode is mainly used in DC negative electrode or carbon, stainless steel, nickel alloy, titanium alloy and other positive electrodes. Due to its good operating performance, even if it is suffer from overload current, it still in good operating. However, when AC welding electrodes by thoriated wolfram electrode, welding should be in a fast speed, and users should be careful to avoid direct current soldering react before AC soldering. When AC welding, ball balled will not melt, so its effect is not as good as a liquid ball.

Thorium is used as the main ingredients for thoriated tungsten electrode which exists in mineral in the form of the chemical compounds, and emits α particle. Mass of emitted α particles is much larger than that of the electron, atoms of material will ionize and lose energy by the time the α particle go through it, so its penetration ability is poor, its range is only a few centimeters in the air, as long as a piece of paper or healthy skin to block. Nevertheless, once they are inhaled or injected, it would be very dangerous, which can directly damage cells, tissues of giblets.

China is so far the only country in the world to produce radioactive tungsten electrodes. However, radioactive element is a physical carcinogen, which is likely to bring out gene mutations, resulting in that a normal proto-oncogene and anti-oncogene have mutation, finally cause the cancer cells. Due to varying degrees of radioactive contamination in its production and application, thoriated wolfram electrode withdraw from market is only a matter of time. China has stepped up the controls on thorium mining in a year and a half ago, prohibiting mining the thorium. Thus resulting in the production of material of thoriated wolfram electrode is not enough, the supply is not adequate to the demand, and price rose sharply. In addition, currently ranked second usage is cerium tungsten electrode, which does not produce radioactive contamination, and belongs to green products, it only need a very small current that it can easily arcing, and dimensional arc current is relatively small. At low current DC conditions, cerium tungsten electrode enjoys a great popular in the world. On the other hand, thorium is a potential nuclear fuel which is widely distributed in the earth's crust, and it is a promising energy materials in the future.

In tungsten oxide smart glass, the electrochromic material changes its opacity: it changes between a colored, translucent state (usually blue) and a transparent state. A burst of electricity is required for changing its opacity, but once the change has been effected, no electricity is needed for maintaining the particular shade which has been reached. Darkening occurs from the edges, moving inward, and is a slow process, ranging from many seconds to several minutes depending on window size.

Electrochromic glass provides visibility even in the darkened state and thus preserves visible contact with the outside environment. It has been used in small-scale applications such as rearview mirrors. Electrochromic technology also finds use in indoor applications, for example, for protection of objects under the glass of museum display cases and picture frame glass from the damaging effects of the UV and visible wavelengths of artificial light.

Tungsten oxide smart glass with electrochromic property has not only been applied in our daily life, but becomes popular in culture like movie and TV series in recent years.

1.The 1982 film Blade Runner contains an early depiction of smart glass in a scene in which a room is darkened with a smart glass-like shade so Rick Deckard, played by Harrison Ford, can administer a polygraph-style test to determine whether Rachael, portrayed by Sean Young, is an organic robot known as a replicant.

2.The 1993 film Philadelphia features a scene in which a large conference room in the middle of the law firm has walls of glass on three sides. Jason Robards says, "Bill, will you get the windows?", and a switch is thrown, and all the windows immediately become translucent, so that no one can see them firing Tom Hanks' character.

3.Smart glass is seen in the 2002 motion picture The Sum of all Fears, in which Jack Ryan, played by Ben Affleck, is ushered into a secret room in the Pentagon, the windows of which whiten over as the door is shut.

4.Smart glass can be seen in the third season of the television series 24, where Jack Bauer changed the visibility to frosted glass to conceal the view as he was injecting heroin.

5.Smart glass is mentioned in Season Three, Episode Five of CSI:Miami, entitled "Legal", in which a young lady working undercover to expose underage drinking is murdered in a room shielded by what Ryan Wolfe refers to as "intelligent glass", where closing the door completes an electrical circuit, making the glass frost over and become opaque. The episode first aired in 2004.

6.Smart glass is seen in the television series Lie To Me with the interrogation/interview room at the Lightman Group offices consisting of what amounts to a room-sized box within a larger room, with smart glass walls. The walls appear to be white and opaque most of the time, but can be rendered clear to reveal those observing a subject from the outside.

7.Smart glass was featured in 2005 video game Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory in a fifth mission Displace International, enabling the main character to quickly switch between on and off modes with his OCP pistol attachment.

8.Smart glass is seen in use in White Collar season 1 episode 8 "Hard Sell" when Neal comes to tell Daniel Reed that Avery plans to betray him. Daniel flips a switch and his office window becomes frosted over, preventing Avery from peeking inside while they talk.

9.Smart glass was featured in the 2012 James Bond movie Skyfall, revealing Raoul Silva to M after he's captured.

10.Smart glass was used in the bathroom in the Real World: Austin.

11.Dimmable smart glass was featured in the 2014 film, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, in the S.H.I.E.L.D. office in Washington, D.C.

12.Smart glass was featured in the 2014 animated feature Big Hero 6, used by Tadashi Hamada for his office.
 

It is said that large-scale 3D printing technology has been approved by the national acceptance, which indicates the large-scale 3D printing technology shall be applied for the research and production of printing size to the largest high-precision metal parts, such as aero-engines, etc.

It is predicted that such a large 3D printing technology is the most important application of critical engine components in the future, such as metal blades of aero-engines, space rocket fuel pump turbine and other processing requirements of high precision and complex machining of metal parts, including the material of tungsten heavy alloy, aluminum alloy, magnesium alloy, etc. A one-time high-precision molding will be shortened exponentially, so large-scale 3D printing technology is widely used in aero-engine, especially now aerospace equipment requires light weight but high reliability, longer cycle life and lower cost, etc.

At present, Chinese large-scale 3D laser printing technology is a kind of molding technology lying automatic by the metal powder accompanying with the laser melting, simply similar to playing candle. However, subject to the efficiency issue, the large-scale 3D printing technology is still only in the experimental stage but has not been dragged into batch production. Anyway, China has abundant of resource of metal, such as tungsten heavy alloy, aluminum alloy, magnesium alloy, etc., there will be no problem for them to be the leading edge in 3D printing technology. Nowadays, China has made considerable great success in using 3D printing technology for more than 20 products including aero-engines, rocket engines, launch vehicles, satellites, missiles, etc.

There is a lyric that sings: the water took time story away, and changed you and me. This song took many people’s green years, and also changed many faces. Those summer that decorated with braided hair and uniforms skirt, those long streets that the white shoes ever run, those talking and laughing sounded on daddy’s bicycles and those days you tenderly smiled to me when Phoenix flower fallen on your shoulders. All of these had been caught in the pages of heavy books, and soak in the time of formalin became the most permanent specimens in our hearts.