Brookhaven’s factory is located on Long Island, NY, approximately 95 km (60 miles) east of New York City. We have in-field sales and support representatives throughout the United States and in over thirty countries. Brookhaven has instruments in all major university and government labs, and in industrial companies who care about research & development and quality control.

Brookhaven was acquired by Nova Instruments Corporation in 2010. Nova Instruments provides quality high-tech analytical instruments and measurement solutions for a broad range of scientific and industrial applications. Since being acquired, Brookhaven has not only grown in size, adding many new employees, including four PhD scientists, but has solidified its internal structure, further improving its manufacturing oversight and quality control methodology.

Firsts for Brookhaven Instruments

Brookhaven has constantly pursued innovation, adding the following instrumentation over the years to establish and then solidify its status as a global leader in the design, sale and maintenance of multi-angle DLS and SLS instruments:

• Combining backscatter for protein and nanoparticle sizing, 90º for colloid sizing, and 15º for zeta potential, three angles in one instrument in the NanoBrook Omni in 2013.
• Particle Solutions, an integrated software package for running DLS, SLS, ELS, & PALS in one instrument, in 2010; and
• ParSEC, a full-featured Chromatography software package in 2009;
• Small-volume, flow-through, fixed angle SLS instrument, the BI-MwA, for Size Exclusion Chromatography in 2002;
• First instrument to combine four light scattering technologies in one instrument---DLS, ELS, SLS, and PALS--- for protein, nanoparticle and polymer characterization in 1998;
• First backscatter DLS instrument commercially available for concentrates, the FOQELS in 1994;
• First combined DLS instrument for sizing and ELS, electrophoretic light scattering for zeta potential in 1993;
• The first single-board correlator in 1991, the BI-9000AT;
• Zeta potential, the ZetaPlus, for the characterization of charge on colloids, proteins and nanoparticles in the 1990s, with Dr. Tscharnuter’s ground-breaking design of the first commercially available Phase Analysis Light Scattering instrument, the ZetaPALS;
• Modern centrifuges, the BI-DCP and BI-XDC, for higher resolution particle sizing in the 1980s;

In an effort to showcase the variety of applications and industries it has serviced, Brookhaven recently launched a new citation and application library. The new library details just a few of the many published papers and documents where a Brookhaven instrument played a role in the research.

History of Brookhaven Instruments

Brookhaven’s roots trace back to the forefront of dynamic light scattering (DLS) technology, with a group of scientists who trace their lineage back to Professor Peter Debye, whose 1944 paper was seminal in the start of static light scattering (SLS), a technique for characterizing molecular weight of polymers and proteins in solution. With such a strong lineage, it is no surprise that Brookhaven is a leader in modern DLS and SLS technology.

Specifically, in 1970, Dr. Bruce Weiner, who had recently graduated from MIT with a degree in physical chemistry, and Dr. Walther Tscharnuter, a docent in physics from the University of Austria, met as postdoctoral associates in Professor Ben Chu’s lab at the State University of New York at Stony Brook on Long Island. Professor Chu’s group was one of only a few groups in the world investigating DLS at the time, which was then known as quasi-elastic light scattering.   

After a brief stint as an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Weiner returned to Long Island in 1976 and formed his first DLS company with Dr. Tscharnuter.  Dr. Tscharnuter designed one of the first digital autocorrelators ever built and Dr. Weiner had designed mechanical and optical equipment for making such measurements. In 1981, the duo formed Brookhaven Instruments Corporation and continued pressing forward with innovative designs.