Sustainable Technologies International has opened a new factory in Queanbeyan, to manufacture its Australian-developed solar wall panels and tiles.

The Panasonic TV manufacturing plant in Sydney has become the first factory in the group in the southern hemisphere to convert its production line to using lead-free solder.

The CSIRO has developed SpeedGrader, based on microwave technology which is used to scan timber for additional properties such as hidden knots.

Emona Instruments has been appointed the Australian distributor for the Gage-Applied range of high speed and deep memory oscilloscope and A/D PC-based cards.

Baltec Systems of Brisbane has been appointed the sole Australian distributors for the range of Labtool device programmers manufactured by Advantech Equipment Corporation of Taiwan.

Hybrid Electronics and Persistent Vision have developed a technology for producing consistent intensity and colour pixels.

Redfern Integrated Optics has received its first external investment funding worth $23.5 million. Tallwood Venture Capital and New Zealand-based TMT together with the original investor Redfern Photonics also participated in the round.

Infineon Technologies says it has achieved a breakthrough in 1300 nm vertical cavity surface-emitting laser technology.

Toshiba is establishing a joint venture to manufacture low temperature polysilicon LCD (liquid crystal display) panels in Tampines, Singapore.

The newly discovered superconducting material magnesium borate has properties that will have important implications for use as a conductor and a high field-generating device.

Conexant and Motorola have agreed to jointly define, develop and manufacture system silicon solutions for broadband communications devices.

Tektronix Australia and Emona Instruments have formed an enhanced partnership that will expand Emona's portfolio of Tektronix' oscilloscope and digital design products.

Marconi has expanded its penetration of the Chinese communications market, with a wave of new contracts to supply leading-edge solutions to provincial telecoms operators, regional utility companies and a cable television enterprise which is moving into internet technology.

IDT has announced that it will acquire telecommunications IC provider, Newave Semiconductor Corporation.

Siemens has broken what it claims is a world record for data transmission capacity by transmitting 3.2 Terabits per second of traffic on standard optical fibre under real conditions.