Photonics
Lighting the way for future innovations
Photonics solutions that generate, detect, and control light open up a world of opportunities and potential applications.
Photonics is a key 21st-century technology at the heart of autonomous cars, 5G networks and next-generation medical devices. CSEM has decades of experience in the transfer of several technologies – including nanoscale optical structures, photonics integrated circuits, laser sources, optical instruments for metrology and gas sensing as well as intelligent imaging – to the industrial sector. Our solutions are used in a wide range of domains, including non-invasive health diagnostics, lighting, energy, security, manufacturing, communication, metrology, lidar, quantum science and mobility.
Our work
Our photonics solutions can help you benefit from the power of light. Here are some examples:
Micro- and nano-optics
- Enabling new functionalities to be added to optoelectronic devices
- Developing free-form micro-optical components with no restrictions in rotational or translational symmetry, making them a powerful tool for optical designers and engineers
- Boosting device miniaturization and performance, creating new functionalities, and reducing manufacturing costs
- Using light-matter interaction with nanostructures to enable unique optical effects used in document security features, for example
Laser sources and laser-based systems
- Developing versatile and modern tools for machining, polishing, soldering, cutting, measuring, detecting, and identifying compounds
- Pushing the limits of short pulse laser sources in terms of frequency and amplitude stability, pulse duration, pulse energy, beam quality, compactness, cost, and more
- System engineering of laser-based instruments for gas sensing, distance measurement, low-phase noise microwave generation, atomic clocks and microwave photonics
- Laser metrology
Photonic-integrated circuits (PICs)
- Combining small footprint, scalability, and reduced costs for industrial applications, such as sensing, lidar, telecommunication, metrology, and quantum technologies
- Focusing on the lithium niobate on insulators (LNOI) platform for PICs that include high-speed modulators, phase shifters, and nonlinear photonics capabilities
- Offering design, foundry, test, and integration services
Multispectral imaging
- Developing fast, low-cost systems for use in point-of-care medical, environmental, and industrial applications
- Combining this approach with machine learning to enable plug and play instrumentation for complex decision making
- Embedding these processes at the edge enables data privacy, security and ultra-fast processing
Image Sensors
- Providing state-of-the-art high-speed, high-dynamic range, event-based sensing, and ultra-low-power image
Want to get involved?
Whether you are set on space exploration, creating innovative lighting concepts, developing new PIC-based systems, novel image sensors or even cutting-edge lasers, we have the right photonics solution for you.
Get in touch today to find out how you can push light to the next limit.
Meet our happy customers
Julien Steinbrunn
Advanced Research Project Manager
The MEDILIGHT partners have shown the potential of blue light in patient care – and the story is just beginning.
Jonas Reinhardt
Director of U-NICA Micronics AG
By measuring fluorescence lifetime, U-NICA is able to offer its customers an additional verification parameter, which is unique for each fluorescent dye. This leads to a much higher security and opens new possibilities for unique customer codes.
Fabrice Schertenleib
Managing Director
Working with CSEM has been very helpful technically and also geographically, with our proximity and the advantages of an all-Swiss partnership adding to the project's overall value.
Mikkel Heuck
Research Scientist Quantum Photonics Laboratory
We are strong supporters of CSEM’s efforts to build up a foundry service for lithium niobate integrated photonics since we believe it will have a major impact on both industry and the scientific community. It is really a fortunate situation for us to get in early and work with CSEM as their capabilities expand and accelerate our research in integrated quantum photonics.
Cornel Marxer
CEO
CSEM offers us a professional service for both manufacturing and development, which keeps us at the top of this high-tech field. We are very happy with this partnership.
Thierry Dreyfus
Head of Technology
CSEM and Regent share a passion for innovative lighting solutions and products. From the very beginning, we established an excellent relationship based on mutual trust and respect. In turn, this has led to many follow-up collaborations. We have recently completed a project closely related to RUN+ and hopefully, this will soon materialize in another innovative product release from Regent.
Scott Hovland
ISS Programme & Exploration Department, ESTEC, Directorate of Human Spaceflight and Operations
The spirit of collaboration that CSEM has shown has been excellent and I would specifically like to commend the center.
Richard Phelan
Head of laser design
We’ve had several projects with CSEM, which have advanced our semiconductor laser products substantially and opened up new commercial opportunities in the area of low linewidth lasers for lidar applications. The discussions with the experts at CSEM have provided us with many new ideas as well as valuable feedback for different applications such as metrology and sensing.
Augustinas Vizbaras
CTO
CSEM has a fantastic understanding and knowledge of using optical systems to measure vital signs, and bringing this know-how into our use case has allowed us to make huge improvements in our OptiBP software—and potentially in the global management of hypertension.
Related Articles
14 February 2022
H2020 Project ELENA
The ELENA project promises to benefit the entire photonics sector by developing the first European lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI)-based platform for photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and establishing the first open-access foundry service for LNOI technology.
14 September 2021
LISA gravitational wave space observatory
CSEM is testing a special laser developed by NASA for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission.
1 January 2021
Swissto 12
Swissto12 and CSEM collaborate to transform the manufacturing processes of radio frequency (RF) systems.