Veeco Instruments announced Aug. 16 that it plans to sell its metrology business, which includes a unit based on the South Coast, to a scientific instruments company called Bruker Corp. for $229 million.

The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year, pending regulatory review and certain closing conditions, Veeco said in a news release. Veeco said it expects to clear about $160 million from the sale after taxes and transaction fees.

Veeco is a nanotechnology company based in Plainview, N.Y. In 1998 it bought Digital Instruments, a company founded by UC Santa Barbara Professor Virgil Elings, and that acquisition became Veeco’s Goleta-based Atomic Force Microscope business. That unit is now part of Veeco’s metrology businesses and will be owned by Bruker once the sale closes.

Bruker intends to combine Veeco Metrology with its global Bruker Nano instruments business, according to Veeco’s news release. Veeco CEO John Peeler said in the release that the metrology unit is “a great business,” but that “it lacks meaningful synergies with our Process Equipment business in technology, distribution and customers.”