The Centre for Integrated Photonics (CIP) at Martlesham Heath has moved into the microfluidics business and is manufacturing on its own production lines in East Anglia.

“We’re taking orders,” Stephen Holton, CEO of CIP, told Electronics Weekly, “they could be for very large volumes.”

The microfluidic devices have 250µm wide channels made in silica through which a fluid can be run. “Photonics is used a lot in diagnostic equipment,” said Holton. Chemical companies use the devices for high throughput analysis.

With a change of materials technology the devices have the potential, because they are inexpensive to make in volume, to provide consumer diagnostic kits. “They would have to go into polymer for that to happen,” said Holton.

CIP has put out a capability data sheet so that customers can have their particular requirements incorporated.

Neville Reyner, chairman, Stephen Holton, CEO, and Neil Weston, v-p

The microfluidic devices are currently all being made at Martlesham Heath. CIP has its own III-V fab running mostly indium phosphide wafers for its other standard products such as super-luminescent diodes (SLDs), optical regenerators, semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) which can switch 40Gbit/s plus and electro-absorption modulators (EAMs) for the 40Gbit/s market. “The market’s moving to 40Gbit/s, and ours are the best performing devices on the market,” said Holton.

The CIP came into existence a couple of years ago after Corning, the US glass company, pulled out of the R&D facility it had established, at a cost of some £40m, at Martlesham Heath.

The East of England Development Agency (EEDA) took over the centre and kept it intact as a going concern, helped by R&D contracts from BT (£256,000), the Engineering Physical Sciences Research Council (£1.24m), and the EU Framework VI programme (€400,000). There was also backing from the DTI.

The CIP then started developing its own, standard products which it is now marketing.

www.ciphotonics.com