Jenoptik’s Berlin plant for high-power semiconductor lasers
Jenoptik laid the foundation stone for the expansion of the semiconductor production in a ceremony attended by around 80 invited guests on 12 Dec 2011. They included representatives from business, the world of politics and industry as well as the Jenoptik workforce at the Berlin-Adlershof site.
“Germany is and remains a location for high-tech manufacturing even though we in the Jenoptik Group are currently pushing forward the process of internationalization in Asia and North America,” said Jenoptik Chairman Michael Mertin at the ceremony to celebrate the laying of the foundation stone. He emphasised the need for investment primarily in the technology-intensive field. “Our local industry knows how to position itself as a supplier of high-tech to the world,” continued Mertin.
The existing production facility in Berlin has reached the limits of its capacity and is being expanded as a result of the high level of customer satisfaction and rapidly increasing demand, particularly from Asia, for future projects as well as for the advancing process of internationalisation by the Lasers & Material Processing division.
The new building will more than double the production capacities. The expansion will increase the gross floor area by around 1,400 sq m to around 3,400 sq m. The production area, including clean room area, will increase from a total of 540 sq m to 930 sq m and is expected to be available to production from 2013.
The manufacturing facility will be automated and equipped with state-of-the-art production technology. GaAs will be structured and processed to create high-power laser bars in a typical semiconductor manufacturing process.
The various work areas will be fitted out with clean room facilities in the categories of between 100 and 1,000 particles per cubic metre – depending upon the requirements of the process step. The complete process line from epitaxy, wafer processing and facet coating through to the manufacture of GaAs components will be installed in the clean rooms.
A total of around € 10 million will be invested in the extension. The financing of the building will be provided by the Hoesch Dortmund pension fund, the internal fittings, including clean rooms as well as the production equipment will come from Jenoptik. Including the existing production facility, the total amount of the investment at the Jenoptik Berlin-Adlershof site will then come to approximately € 24 million.
The laser bars from the production facility at Berlin-Adlershof will be sent to customers all over the world and will be processed to create high-power diode lasers at Jenoptik in Jena. This is a field in which Jenoptik is considered one of the leading suppliers and an acknowledged world leader in quality. The group has the entire technology chain at its disposal – from the manufacture of high-power diode lasers, the most energy-efficient of all types of lasers, through to laser processing systems for material processing.
Jenoptik has had its own production facility in Berlin-Adlershof since 2006. The optoelectronic base material and its efficient manufacture are developed by Jenoptik in close cooperation with the locally based Ferdinand-Braun-Institut, Leibniz-Institut for Ultra High Frequency Technology (FBH).
