Tiger Optics

The Tiger’s Tale

“I’m an esoteric spectroscopist by training, but I’d like to do something practical,” declared Kevin Lehmann, a professor at Princeton University when I first contacted him regarding the possibility of licensing his powerful new technology called Continuous Wave Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy (CW CRDS). At the time, I had no idea what an “esoteric spectroscopist” was, but I thought we could help him out on the practical side.

MEECO Inc., the company my father founded in 1948, was an early pioneer of instruments to measure trace moisture in solids, natural gas, and industrial specialty gases. After I took over in 1983, MEECO developed new products and became a leading supplier of moisture analyzers to the burgeoning semiconductor market worldwide. In the mid-1990s, I bet the company’s future on Dr. Lehmann’s revolutionary work in spectroscopy.

Using lasers to measure the light absorption of a given molecule, CW CRDS promised to complete, within seconds, measurements that normally took many hours. The technology was said to be highly stable and selective, with no tendency to drift or to confuse one molecule for another. In addition, it could detect in the parts-per-trillions, unlike the technology of most conventional analyzers. 

In light of that potential, MEECO became the exclusive worldwide licensee for Dr. Lehmann’s first patent. We moved one of our lab technicians to Princeton to work shoulder-to-shoulder with the scientists there. The early word back was discouraging, however. The same qualities that drew us to CW CRDS—its great sensitivity, speed of response, and accuracy—also made it quite delicate, with results that were difficult to reproduce consistently.

Extraordinary Range

Yet the longer we worked on CW CRDS, the more apparent was its promise. Based on absorption spectroscopy, the technology attunes light rays to the unique molecular fingerprint of the target species. CW CRDS measures the time that elapses before the light disappears, or “rings down,” thereby providing a non-destructive and continuous molecular count in milliseconds. The technology has the ability to measure in the near-infrared (IR) and the potential to access the mid-IR and ultraviolet (UV) regions, across a huge array of molecules. It can work in challenging gaseous matrices, including corrosives, toxics, and hydrides. It covers an extraordinary dynamic range—over four orders of magnitude—with no diminution of performance at either end.

We realized that CW CRDS could serve as a powerful platform technology for multiple markets and applications, ranging from semiconductor fabrication plants to greenhouse gas monitoring, diagnostic breath analysis, or untold projects in research and industrial laboratories. Therefore, despite the initial setbacks, we were determined to apply all that we had learned from five decades of instrument design at MEECO to convert CW CRDS into a useful tool for society.

In 1999, our director of engineering plunked the Lehmann breadboard onto the backseat of his car and drove it to the MEECO plant, determined to work until we perfected the design. Two years later, we put a superbly robust product to the ultimate test. We took it to a nearby naval aviation test house, subjected it to four gravities of force, and waited to see how long it would take to fail. It never did.

Elated by the results, we spun our CW-CRDS division into a separate business in 2001 and—with a tip of the hat to Princeton University and its mascot—named the new company Tiger Optics LLC. We needed to attract significant investment, but that took time. So, for initial support, we relied upon the company’s founders, advisors, and its independent industrial representative for Singapore and Korea.

Winning Recognition

In early 2001, we introduced the world’s first CW-CRDS product, named the MTO-1000. The first five buyers hailed from three continents and found diverse uses for the instrument. Those early customers were the Dutch national lab, a gas contractor serving AMD Dresden, and semiconductor fabs in Oregon, Singapore and Suzhou, China.

By 2005, customers and investors recognized the added benefit of Tiger’s ability to reduce manufacturing waste, with its array of products that, on their own, require minimal power to operate. Enhanced by its “green” properties, Tiger Optics won favor among “clean tech” investors. Expansion Capital Partners’ Clean Technology Fund II and Georgieff Capital took stakes in the company.

Our platform technology has allowed us to add many more products. In 2005, we sold our first LaserTrace sensor, the world’s first laser-based trace oxygen analyzer (based on a patent held jointly by Princeton University and Tiger Optics). We introduced Tiger’s HALO in 2006, and the HALO+ mini-CRDS device in 2007, followed by the Tiger-i in 2008 for atmospheric monitoring of greenhouse gases. In 2009, Tiger unveiled the Prismatic Multi-Species Gas Analyzer that can measure trace levels of as many as 16 different molecules. The Prismatic caps more than a decade of development that began when Dr. Lehmann conceived of a CRDS tool that would replace the customary high-reflectivity mirrors with Brewster’s Angle prisms. In 2010, we introduced the ALOHA H2O for ammonia analysis in the burgeoning High Brightness LED market.

All told, we’ve shipped close to $50 million worth of CW-CRDS analyzers from 2001 - 2011, covering more than 1,000 points at chemical plants, semiconductor fabs, laboratories, and gas production and distribution facilities around the world. Returning customers accounted for more than 65 percent of Tiger Optics sales in each of the three preceding years.

At Tiger, we take quiet pride in our commitment to innovation and global enterprise, while keeping our industrial roots. Our faith in CW CRDS has been vindicated. We are proud of our achievements in bringing this powerful technology to market, gaining international acceptance, advancing the benefits of the technology with award-winning new products, and sparking competitive interest in the field. Tiger relishes its role in revolutionizing the way work is conducted, as its products contribute to cleaner, more streamlined, and more accurate industrial processes, laboratory research, and emissions monitoring.

Dr. Lehmann, you’ve done “something practical.”