A little more than 60 years after the invention of the first confocal microscope in 1955, two WSU researchers launched Klar Scientific, a company focused on finishing the final details of their own new and improved microscope that uses photoluminescence.

“Klar is German for clear,” said co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Matthew McCluskey, who is also the chair of the physics department. “It’s like we are seeing things more clearly.”

McCluskey started working on the photoluminescence microscope, which uses the light coming off the sample to get information and can look at almost anything, in 2012. He said he was having a hard time gathering enough data with a regular confocal microscope, according to a WSU news release. He decided to replace it with a custom-built microscope device camera, according to the news release.

“It doesn’t look like a microscope in some ways, because usually if you see a microscope you have those little things where you look in,” McCluskey said. “We have everything on a computer screen and there’s no real reason to have the eye pieces.”

McClusky is in charge of developing the technology and some applications for the microscope. He invented a new technology called Surface Profiling or Topographic Mapping, according to co-founder and CEO Rick Lytel.

While using other confocal microscopes to view a solid object with an uneven surface, it can be difficult to remain focused on the sample if it moves even slightly, Lytel said. He said McCluskey’s profiling technology automatically refocuses no matter the roughness of the surface, and takes out focus error other microscopes can create.

“By taking a picture of the emitted light, we will be able to maintain focus,” McCluskey said in an email. “If the microscope is out of focus, the picture shows a big, fuzzy blob. If it is in focus, it shows a small, bright spot. If a surface is bumpy, the microscope can adjust the objective lens up and down to maintain focus. The amount the lens moves up or down tells us the topography (hills and valleys) of the surface.”

Confocal microscopes use a laser to focus on a specific point and the light emitted back turns into data, which a computer assembles into an image.

“As the spot gets bigger or smaller you can tell if it’s in or out of focus and so it gives you a way to measure the height of your surface,” McCluskey said. “So, if you think about a topographic map, like those maps of mountains and valleys, that’s what we hope to make for the sample. Then we can get the actual height variations of the surface, and that is something that can’t be done with normal microscopes.”

Klar Scientific currently has just one full-time employee. As a WSU postdoctoral research assistant, Slade Jokela’s job is to assemble the new microscope when they get all the parts in, test out the applications and, in about a month, train new applications and try to find new ways to use it.

“I feel like in a month we should have everything tested and everything ready to go,” Jokela said. “And then after that it’s trying to make sure that we can do what we want to do with (the microscope). In general what I’ll do is ask various scientists for samples that they would normally analyze in their lab and then I would show what we can do with our new technology.”

As CEO, Lytel said his major role in the company is to get funding for facility and operations going, in addition to talking with customers and collaborators and getting feedback on what they like and need. He hopes to start exploring partners and discussing licensing with them.

“We’re new enough that we’re, for this first year, focusing on what we know, and that’s academic sciences,” Jokela said, “but we have been talking with industry.”

Jokela said that fitting to the needs of their consumers is what is most important about starting a business.

“We hope we are very good at finding little defects on a surface of a metal or plastic disk drive,” McCluskey said, “so hard drive manufacturers might be interested in a microscope like this to find some defects on their products.”

Lytel said confocal microscopes cost $250,000 – $500,000 each. Klar Scientific’s photoluminescence microscope could cost near or less than $100,000 and Lytel said it is equipped with more functions than its competitors.

WSU has supported Klar Scientific in grants and other programs, including the Innovation and Leadership Development program to attract funding, according to the news release.

The machine shop in the Webster Hall basement makes all the custom components for the microscope, McCluskey said. In addition, the company is now utilizing their new business location in the WSU Research and Technology Park to finish their work over the spring.

Klar Scientific’s move to the 200-square-foot lab in the Research and Technology Park coincides with the $210,000 National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research grant they received Jan. 1, McCluskey said. The grant will provide for this year and after that, they will have to search for more money.

“Hopefully,” Jokela said, “we’ll have our first sale by then and endorsements and more grant money to help with future sales.”