Photonics

Lighting the way for future innovations

Photonics solutions that generate, detect, and control light open up a world of opportunities and potential applications.

Multiple 5x5 mm² chips fabricated on CSEM's lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI) PIC platform.

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.

Urgo Medical

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.

U-NICA Micronics AG

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.

TESA-Hexagon

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.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

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.

Sercalo Microtechnology

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.

Regent Lighting

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.

European Space Agency (ESA)

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.

Eblana Photonics

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.