In 1985, Sang-il Park, the CEO of Park Systems, was a PhD student and integral member of Professor Calvin Quate’s team at Stanford, which invented the atomic force microscopy (AFM) together with the researchers at IBM.

In 1988, Dr. Park upon his graduation took this technology out of the lab and founded Park Scientific Instruments (PSI), where it pioneered the commercialization of AFM. After releasing a series of AFM products that were sold into both academia and industry, PSI was acquired by Thermo Spectra in 1997.

Following the sales of PSI, Dr. Park founded PSIA to develop the next generation AFM that would solve the shortcomings of conventional systems: the monolithic scanning architecture that produced bowed images, and crosstalk phenomena that generated data artifacts.

PSIA introduced the new generation AFM Park XE series with a far superior AFM architecture consisting of decoupled XY (lateral) and the Z (vertical) scanners that provides markedly superior accurate height measurements and precision nanometrology.

Furthermore, PSIA developed the industrial AFM systems and succeeded in selling to the world’s largest data storage makers. This provided a platform for subsequent development of automated AFM for the semiconductor market.

On the business front, PSIA expanded its market reach by establishing subsidiaries in the US (2003) and in Japan (2007).

In the year 2007, PSIA changed its name to Park Systems.

Park Systems grew rapidly through the introduction of new AFM series, and expansion of the product lines. The newly launched Park NX series emerged as the most accurate AFM in the market. Park Systems provided the most comprehensive line of AFMs from research desktop to fully automated AFM systems integrated with robotic arms.

On the industrial side, Park Systems succeeded in forming a joint development program with IMEC, a world leading consortium for semiconductor and nano-electronics. This gave Park Systems a leg up into the advanced semiconductor market.

In 2015, Park Systems went IPO by listing initial public offering on KOSDAQ.

Park Systems has accelerated its growth through expanded geographical coverage by adding new regional headquarters in Germany, UK, France, Singapore, India, China, Taiwan and Mexico.

Moreover, the successful penetration of its AFM systems into semiconductor fabs, and subsequent domination of this market has catapulted Park Systems onto the position of the world’s leading AFM manufacturer. In 2020, Forbes recognized Park Systems as the emerging top 200 companies under $1 Billion in Asia.

Park Systems recently launched the Park FX series that is a new leap forward in atomic force microscopy. The Park FX series AFM is an automatic AFM that hides all the complexities of an AFM system. It permits users to simply focus on their research instead of its tool operation.

In 2023, Park Systems expanded its business portfolio by acquiring Accurion GmbH, a Germany-based company that develops and manufactures imaging spectroscopic ellipsometers (ISE) and active vibration isolations (AVI).