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17 Jun 2002
Despite the economic downturn and widespread redundancies, start-ups from around the world are meeting at Photonics West to recruit new staff and exhibit their products. Rebecca Pool talks to new businesses from Asia and Europe to find out what they have to offer.
DenseLight Semiconductors is a Singapore-based start-up that emerged two years ago from the Nanyang Technical University, Singapore. Having won USD 30 million in venture capital earlier this month, the photonic-integrated-circuit maker is ready to start production.
Yee-Loy Lam, chairman and chief technical officer of DenseLight, says that the company will show its products for the first time at Photonics West. "Our first target market is North America and at Photonics West we will show our first three products," he said.
Its initial offerings are a 2.5 Gbit/s directly modulated 1550 nm distributed-feedback (DFB) laser, a high-power 5 mW superluminescent diode and a high-performance gain chip. Built on an indium phosphide (InP) platform and fabricated by quantum well intermixing via ion beam implantation, future products include a tunable laser, a Raman pump laser, a photodetector and an optical channel monitor.
DenseLight believes that its technologies will revolutionize the optical networking industry. "We have the perfect technology to integrate both actives and passives," said Lam. "And now we have the potential to go to the market-place and be the market leader."
Danish company Crystal Fibre, the first commercial supplier of photonic crystal fiber, intends to showcase two of its latest products at Photonics West.
The first, a non-linear, 2 µm singlemode fiber, has zero dispersion at a wavelength of 760 nm and provides broad and flat super-continuum generation with short-pulsed lasers. The second is a 20 µm singlemode fiber with low losses in the near-infrared range. It is capable of high power delivery and is suitable for fiber pigtailing and mode filtering.
Crystal Fibre is a spin-off from the Danish Technical University's Center for Communication, Optics and Materials. Wholly owned and funded by the Danish industrial group NKT, the 20-strong company is currently recruiting.
Having established its production facility last year, the company is enthusiastic about the future. "The full applications potential [of crystal fiber] has yet to be identified," said chief executive Michael Kjær. "However I believe the market could be immense."
Swiss-Finnish diffractive and micro-optics maker Heptagon will present its standard and customized products at the show. These include its diffractive optical elements, linear gratings, wire grid polarizers, and diffractive and refractive lenslet arrays, all of which are ready for advanced commercial applications.
While other companies flounder in today's economic conditions, Heptagon has grown by 150 % in the past year and is also recruiting. Chief executive Jyrki Saarinen believes that his products' wide ranging applications are responsible for the start-up's success.
"We have a diverse range of products that cover many market segments and we didn't focus on telecoms before the recession," he said. "Our technology is exciting and also essential to our customers."
Heptagon has also recently raised Euro 1.5 million in funds. Saarinen says the company will spend this money on recruitment, ramping up production and technology developments.
ULM Photonics, one of Germany's newest vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) makers, will exhibit its flip-chip VCSEL arrays. The 64-channel GaAs 850 nm and 980 nm VCSELs are designed for parallel optical interconnects.
ULM Photonics emerged from the University of Ulm, Germany, just two years ago. It is backed by US-based Schott Optovance, and chief executive Burghard Schneider says that these links have helped the company penetrate the US data communications market. ULM Photonics' customer base of more than 80 % US companies stands as a testament to this.
Planning to launch 10 Gbit/s singlemode 850 nm and 980 nm VCSELs next, the company is also working on 1310 nm VCSELs. Schneider expects to market these in approximately two years and adds: "The slow economy has postponed our plans by half a year. Fewer customers has led to a slower ramp-up, but we are still in a positive situation."
The Crystal Consortium (TCC) in Scotland, UK, started out just one year ago as a joint venture between the UK technology organisation Qinetiq and Strathclyde University. Aiming to work with customers to help them develop crystals and crystal growth processes, the company plans to present its new business model for crystal growth development at Photonics West.
According to sales and marketing manager Stephen-Mark Williams, when working with a customer TCC's starting point is the customer's existing crystal. Researchers at the company will then spend up to two years building on the existing crystal in-house, before transferring the improved technology back to the customer.
The company offers expertise on optoelectronic single-crystals for telecoms, remote sensing and optical signal-processing applications. Other key areas are piezoelectric single-crystals for medical imaging and sonar, and scintillator single-crystals for x-ray and gamma-ray applications.
"Our present customer base is in the US and UK," said Williams. "We are looking to find more customers in the US and also Japan." The company also hopes to win venture capital backing and wishes to develop its intellectual property to licence its technology.
Author
Rebecca Pool is the news editor of optics.org and Opto & Laser Europe magazine.
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