Intense grows headcount as markets diversify
Optoelectronic chip manufacturer Intense Photonics, based in Scotland, UK, has increased its workforce from 50 to 65 in response to increased interest in its products from the defense and printing markets.
The company has also expanded its cleanroom facilities for wafer fabrication, device testing and packaging operations.
Intense Photonics makes InP-based devices based on its proprietary “quantum well intermixing” (QWI) technology, which allows multiple optical functions to be fabricated in a single processing stage.
With the continuing weakness of the optical telecoms market, Intense has broadened its focus to exploit its technology in other markets, said Intense CEO David Lockwood. “Optical integrated circuits are a platform for progress for many industry sectors,” he added.
Intense says its technology has particular relevance to the printing and defense markets. “We are already commencing production of laser arrays for printing applications,” said Neil Weston, president of sales and marketing at Intense.
On the defense side, Intense is working on laser array designs for remote sensing applications, including an £80 000 BAE Systems project awarded last year. “We expect to start volume production for at lease one of these projects later in 2004,” said Weston.
Despite the focus on non-telecoms applications, Intense still sees fiber-optics as an important market. It believes that a telecoms upturn this year will fuel a pronounced interest in tunable optics and its broadband electro-absorption modulator (EAM) devices.
Using QWI, Intense can integrate multiple InP modulators and a semiconductor optical amplifier on a single die, providing a device capable of operating over the entire C-band with zero insertion loss. The company says that this architecture is particularly relevant to shorter-haul multiplexing.