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Intense Photonics secures £7.75M/$11M Funding for "Breakthrough" Optics Technology

Source: Intense Photonics

26 June 2001

Glasgow, Scotland. Intense Photonics has secured £7.75 million (approx. US$11 million) of equity financing, to commercialize its unique fabrication technology for photonic integrated circuits (PICs). The funding comes from Europe s leading venture capital company, 3i, and ACT Capital Partners, and reflects the optical start-up s highly commercial approach.

This approach is based on a breakthrough optoelectronics technology that addresses both the short and long term needs of fiber communications systems designers. A unique monolithic IC fabrication process allows the company to build and deliver integrated solutions, supporting current demands for lower costs and higher performance, as well as the emerging trends towards more efficient and compact modules - using techniques such as hybrid assembly or single-chip solutions.

The company s technology is based on a proprietary quantum well intermixing (QWI) fabrication process for III-V semiconductors, which has already been trialled on a wide variety of device designs including lasers, amplifiers, filters and switches. This proven technology gives the new company a very fast track to market; it has already announced its first PIC, which exploits QWI s integration capability to create a high-yield chip for one of today s volume DWDM markets.

"Integration is key to the development of optical communications, and monolithic IC technologies offer a practical platform for delivering it", says Andrew Davison of 3i. "We view Intense Photonics technology as among those fundamental to successful evolution of the industry. Combined with the outstanding management team, this represents an exciting investment opportunity with which to leverage our global network and build significant shareholder value".

"Rapid change in fiber optic technologies has introduced considerable risk into the broadband communications market", says David Lockwood, CEO of Intense Photonics. "Our technology addresses this by providing a proven technology for long term evolution, which is capable of delivering gradual enhancements and step-function changes, according to individual needs."

The market for optical components used in DWDM systems is forecast to be $4.5billion in 2001, and to grow to $13.6billion by 2004, according to telecom market research firm RHK, Inc. John Lively, RHK s Director of Optical Components research, believes there are two key trends underlying this market growth: the migration from passive to active devices, and the replacement of discrete single-function components with monolithic multi-function components. Both of these aspects are fundamental to Intense Photonics work, and the company believes it can capture 20% of its target component sectors within four years.

Between them, Intense Photonics team of experts assembled from university and industry bring some 120 man-years of opto-electronics experience to the new enterprise.

Its proprietary QWI technology allows the properties of a semiconductor material to be modified, typically allowing its energy bandgap to be controlled - making it opaque or transparent to light - such that multiple optical communications functions can be integrated on a monolithic chip.

The result is a long-life platform for developing solutions to the transceiver, switching and routing subsystems for today s DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) backbones, and tomorrow s all-optical networks, in a manner which can be fabricated and packaged with ease.

Intense Photonics intends demonstrating a prototype photonic integrated circuit (PIC) building block - fabricated at the company s Glasgow laboratories - at the ECOC exhibition in September 2001.

Legal, corporate finance and tax advice have been provided to Intense Photonics throughout the transaction by Dundas & Wilson and Andersens, who have both taken an equity stake. Laurence Ward, Head of Technology at Dundas & Wilson, speaking on behalf of both firms, said, "We are delighted to be closely associated with the development of one of the most exciting new technology companies in Europe".

Abbreviations: -------------- III-V a family of crystal semiconductor materials offering much higher speeds of operation than the silicon which is almost universally used for making chips today.

DWDM dense wavelength division multiplexing, a way of sending data over optical fibres which uses different colours of light, or wavelengths, to carry different signal streams, thereby vastly increase the quantity of information that can be transmitted simultaneously.

PIC photonic integrated circuit - a semiconductor chip operating using light rather than electronic signals.

QWI A technique that allows the optical properties of a III-V semiconductor material to be modified and controlled.

What is a quantum well intermixing? -------------------------------- QWI is a technique that allows the properties of a semiconductor material to be modified, typically allowing its energy bandgap to be controlled - making it opaque or transparent to light - such that multiple optical communications functions can be integrated on a monolithic chip. Quantum wells are active elements in opto-electronic (III-V compound) semiconductor devices. Electrons tend to gravitate to the lowest possible energy position and the term wells refers to an area which is [processed] grown especially to have a lower energy, so that it acts as a trap for electrons. They are referred to as quantum wells because these areas are extremely small - of the order of a few atomic layers thick - which makes their operation governed by quantum mechanics, allowing only specific energies and bandgaps.

Because quantum well structures are extremely thin they can be affected easily. This is achieved by depositing [or regrowing] additional layers and then applying heat - exciting the atoms and thereby causing intermixing with surrounding materials. By careful choice of capping layers it is possible to selectively intermix the quantum wells across a wafer, thus allowing a single chip to perform various optical functions. For example, Intense Photonics 980 nm pump laser uses quantum well structures to provide more efficient and higher power light output.

Quantum well structures improve its performance by forcing electrons from the N material and holes from the P material to be at the same energy levels, thereby optimising the strength of the combination process (which results in photon emission). By closely controlling the thickness of the quantum layer, quantum wells are also used to optimise the wavelength of the emitted light. And, by eliminating the quantum well structures at the device s edges, these regions become passive and transparent to the emitted light, thus preventing a common laser failure mode caused by heating damage In other devices, QWI principles might be used to achieve absorption - facilitating data modulation for example - or filtering, for selecting and switching particular data transmission wavelengths.

Contact: Barrie Nicholson Wordsun Tel: +44 (0)1258 840999 barrie@wordsun.com or Jim Ashe, VP Sales and Marketing Intense Photonics Ltd Kelvin Campus, West of Scotland Science Park, Glasgow G20 0SP Scotland Tel: +44 (0)141 589 7000 Fax: +44 (0)141 589 7039 enquiries@intensephotonics.com or Andrew Davison, Chris Hodges, Robin Marshall 3i, Tel: +44 (0)141 248 4456 or John O Sullivan ACT Capital Partners, Tel: +353 12 60 09 66

Barrie Nicholson Wordsun
Tel: +44 (0)1258 840999
barrie@wordsun.com
or
Jim Ashe, VP Sales and Marketing
Intense Photonics Ltd
Kelvin Campus, West of Scotland Science Park, Glasgow G20 0SP Scotland
Tel: +44 (0)141 589 7000
Fax: +44 (0)141 589 7039
enquiries@intensephotonics.com
or
Andrew Davison, Chris Hodges, Robin Marshall
3i,
Tel: +44 (0)141 248 4456
or
John O Sullivan
ACT Capital Partners,
Tel: +353 12 60 09 66
E-mail: enquiries@intensephotonics.com
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