OREANDA-NEWS. January 30, 2012. RUSNANO project company Germanium and Applications initiated high-tech production of electro-optical components at its factory in Novomoskovsk, in Tula Oblast. The project is part of a complex for production of semiconductor germanium and related items that Germanium and Applications is establishing with RUSNANO’s participation. Its total budget is 2.16 million rubles. RUSNANO will co-invest up to 790 million rubles.

The factory will primarily produce blanks of germanium—disks, bars, and plates, including particularly thin items and spherical blanks for lenses. Diagonal rectangular blanks range from 6 millimeters to 300 millimeters. The diameter of round blanks may be as large as to 300 millimeters, and the diameter of lenses—to 200 millimeters. In 2012 and 2013 Germanium and Applications plans to increase its array of products, adding optical windows, prisms, lenses, and substrates. Production is planned at three to four tons annually. By 2013 production will rise to six tons per year.

Germanium and its compounds have many applications in high-tech areas of engineering, medicine, and manufacturing. Night vision devices contain optics of germanium. The element is used in radiation sensors and substrates for photovoltaic devices for solar batteries based in outer space. In lighting technology, germanium is used as a reagent for production of luminescent materials. In chemistry—as a catalyst. In metallurgy, germanium is used to prepare special alloys. Pharmacology uses it in bioactive compounds and anti-cancer drugs. Germanium is the foundation for many nanotechnology solutions.

Germanium-based products derive their valued properties—optical characteristics and mechanical stability—from nanosized coatings that are its producers’ proprietary information.

Germanium and Application’s production facility has unique measuring instruments and other advanced equipment, notably programmable controlled machines for cutting and making spherical blanks. To these, the company will soon add equipment for fine grinding and polishing of optical elements and substrates. The factory will be equipped with highly productive Czochralski furnaces where germanium monocrystals will be grown.

The Novomoskovsk production of germanium and related items is part of a large-scale production complex belonging to Germanium and Applications. It is being broadened through a joint project with RUSNANO. The company has surface coal mine acreage in Primorsk Krai where it extracts germanium-containing coal. It produces germanium concentrate in expanded and modernized facilities a few kilometers from the field. The new production of electro-optical components in Novomoskovsk is linked to other chemical processes in which the company recovers germanium from materials that are formed during manufacture of blanks and workpieces.