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BinOptics targets blue lasers after $10m scoop

Following a $10 million funding round, US photonic chipmaker BinOptics says that it will move towards full-scale production of its low-cost lasers.

BinOptics, the US company that makes etched-facet lasers, has raised $10 million in Series B funding.

The company says that it will use the funds to scale up its production capability for its existing InP products, while it also plans to target the emerging next-generation DVD market for blue diode lasers.

"BinOptics has shown that its etched-facet technology is advantageous for a wide range of semiconductor materials," said Dan Brown, a partner at ArrowPath Venture Capital, one of two new investors in the company that led the funding round.

Greg Hulecki, managing partner at the second new investor, FA Technology Ventures, added: "BinOptics will play a significant role in reducing the cost of its customers' equipment and systems through efficient manufacturing and functional integration."

Hulecki said that BinOptics would now move its products to full-scale production.

Those products include the proprietary horizontal-cavity surface-emitting laser (HCSEL), a chip technology that integrates a horizontal laser cavity with a 45° etched reflecting mirror to direct the beam vertically.

Unlike most laser fabricators, who use a cleaving technique to create laser facets, BinOptics uses etching. This means that a highly reflective distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) can be used instead of an optical coating.

BinOptics' InP-based HCSELs emit at 1310 and 1550 nm, and the company plans to integrate these devices with high-speed detectors to create optical transceiver chips for passive optical networks. It expects to have a commercial product this year.

The etched-facet laser technology was first developed at Cornell University, and BinOptics remains based at the nearby Cornell Business and Technology Park in Ithaca, NY.

The company was founded in 2000 with funding from Draper Fisher Jurveston, Cayuga Venture Fund II and Stanford University.

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