FEI Company (Field Electron and Ion Company, FEI) is an American company that designs, manufactures, and supports microscope technology. Headquartered in Hillsboro, Oregon, FEI has over 2,800 employees and sales and service operations in more than 50 countries around the world. Formerly listed on the NASDAQ, it is a subsidiary of

Thermo Fisher Scientific Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is an American supplier of scientific instrumentation, reagents and consumables, and software services. Based in Waltham, Massachusetts, Thermo Fisher was formed through the merger of Thermo Electron and Fisher S ...

History

The FEI company was founded in 1971 as Field Electron and Ion Company by Dr. Lynwood W. Swanson, Mr. Noel A. Martin and Mr. Lloyd Swenson, as a supplier of electron and ion beam sources for field emission research and electron microscopy. The name was shortened to FEI Company in 1973. In 1978, Dr. J.H. Orloff, a research specialist in electrostatic optics for

field emission Field electron emission, also known as field emission (FE) and electron field emission, is emission of electrons induced by an electrostatic field. The most common context is field emission from a solid surface into a vacuum. However, field emissio ...

ion and electron sources, joined the company as its fourth partner. Swanson was a professor of applied physics at the

Oregon Graduate Center The Oregon Graduate Center was a unique, private, postgraduate-only research university in Washington County, Oregon, on the west side of Portland, from 1963 to 2001. The center was renamed the Oregon Graduate Institute in 1989. The Institute me ...

, and Orloff's doctoral adviser. FEI's introduction of the

liquid metal ion source A liquid metal ion source (LMIS) is an ion source which uses metal that is heated to the liquid state and used to form an electrospray to form ions. An electrospray Taylor cone is formed by the application of a strong electric field and ions are ...

in 1981 led to its application in the semiconductor industry for mask repair and defect analysis. The current company was formed by the 1997 merger between FEI and

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...

Electron Optics, and the 1999 acquisition of ion beam company Micrion. As such, the company can trace its roots in electron microscopy to the early commercial instruments produced by Philips Electron Optics in the 1940s. On December 20, 2006, Philips Business Electronics International B.V. sold its shares of common stock in FEI Company reducing its shareholding in FEI to zero. In May 2011, the company announced a second straight quarter of record revenue and profits, with the company totaling nearly $200 million in revenue for their second quarter. The company attributed the growth to a diversification of its clientele. On May 27, 2016,

Inc. announced its acquisition of FEI Company for US$4.2 billion, which commenced in early 2017. At the time of the transaction, FEI had more than 2700 employees in over 20 countries. The FEI trademark is being phased out in favor of the ''Materials & Structural Analysis'' division of Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Operations

The products manufactured by the company include

focused ion beam Focused ion beam, also known as FIB, is a technique used particularly in the semiconductor industry, materials science and increasingly in the biological field for site-specific analysis, deposition, and ablation of materials. A FIB setup is a s ...

workstations, scanning electron microscopes,

transmission electron microscope Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is a microscopy technique in which a beam of electrons is transmitted through a specimen to form an image. The specimen is most often an ultrathin section less than 100 nm thick or a suspension on a gr ...

s, and focusing columns. The company has research and development centers in Hillsboro,

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

;

Eindhoven Eindhoven () is a city and municipality in the Netherlands, located in the southern province of North Brabant of which it is its largest. With a population of 238,326 on 1 January 2022,The Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

;

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

, Germany;

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

, China PRC;

Tokyo, Japan Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

;

Brno Brno ( , ; german: Brünn ) is a city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava and Svratka rivers, Brno has about 380,000 inhabitants, making it the second-largest city in the Czech Republic ...

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

;

Canberra Canberra ( ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The ci ...

, Australia;

Trondheim Trondheim ( , , ; sma, Tråante), historically Kaupangen, Nidaros and Trondhjem (), is a city and municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. As of 2020, it had a population of 205,332, was the third most populous municipality in Norway, and ...

, Norway; and

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefectur ...

, France. It has sales and service operations in more than 50 countries.

Subsidiaries

* FEI Technologies Inc. (Oregon, United States) * ASPEX Corporation (dba FEI Delmont) (Pennsylvania, United States) * Visualization Sciences Group Inc. (dba FEI Houston) (United States) * FEI Electron Optics International B.V. (Netherlands) * FEI Electron Optics B.V. (Netherlands) * FEI Europe B.V. (Netherlands) * FEI CPD B.V. (Netherlands) * FEI Global Holdings C.V. (Netherlands) * FEI Czech Republic s.r.o. (Czech Republic) * FEI Munich GmbH (fka TILL Photonics GmbH) (Germany) * FEI Deutschland GmbH (Germany) * FEI France SAS (France) * FEI SAS (fka Visualization Sciences Group SAS) (France) * FEI UK Limited (United Kingdom) * FEI Italia S.r.l. (Italy) * FEI Norway Holding AS (fka Lithicon AS) (Norway) * FEI Trondheim AS (fka Lithicon Norway AS) (Norway) * FEI Servicos de Nanotechnologia Ltda (Brazil) * FEI Technology de Mexico S.A. de C.V. (Mexico) * FEI Company Japan Ltd. (Japan) * FEI Trading (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (China) * FEI APR Co., Ltd. (China) * FEI Hong Kong Company Limited (Hong Kong) * FEI Korea Ltd. (South Korea) * FEI Company of USA (S.E.A.) Pte Ltd (Singapore) * FEI Melbourne Pty Ltd. (Australia) * FEI Canberra Pty Ltd. (fka Lithicon Australia Pty Ltd.) (Australia) * FEI Microscopy Solutions Ltd. (Israel)

References

External links

FEI Website
- Official FEI website {{ORCompanies Manufacturing companies established in 1971 Companies based in Hillsboro, Oregon Multinational companies Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq 1971 establishments in Oregon American companies established in 1971 2017 mergers and acquisitions

History

Operations

Subsidiaries

See also

References

External links