Jan Friis Jorgensen is the main developer of the Scanning Probe Image Processor or SPIP (trademarked), a computer program that processes the output from scanning probe microscopes. This program is currently the only one of its kind in the world, and sales figures are rising steeply. SPIP includes the visualization of image files and various other features such as auto-correlation and Fourier transforms. Add-on modules include calibration and roughness analysis.
An electrical engineer with an industrial PhD in scanning probe microscopy, Friis Jorgensen participated in the early developments of the scanning tunneling microscope in Denmark. Erik Laegsgaard built the first one in 1987 in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Aarhus (Flemming Besenbacher and Ivan Steensgaard). Towards the end of 1987, Danish Micro Engineering (DME) turned to the production of SPMs. Friis Jorgensen joined that company between 1989 and 1990. He then worked on an industrial PhD at IBM Denmark, and also spent 4 months at IBM Zurich. From 1993 to 1998 he worked at the Danish Institute of Fundamental Metrology (DFM), interrupted by a year at the National Institute of Science and Technology, just outside Washington, DC. In 1998 he founded a company called Image Metrology to market the program, honed on his experience in the previous decade. The company is located on the campus of the Danish Technical University, in the same building as DFM. In May 2001, the company has acquired an additional location close by.
Since 1999, the company has participated in the European Network on the Calibration of Scanning Probe Microscopes, sponsored by the EU Commission. The purpose of this network is to establish a basis for the application of SPMs to metrology on the nanoscale.
We will soon feature an interview with Jan Friis Jorgensen here.
This page was written by Arne Hessenbruch on 15 May 2001.