Segment Insights: Photonics

Innovating the Future: A Global Team Effort

October 16, 2023

Over the last decade, PI has earned a clear leadership position in the specialized market of photonics test and assembly. Unique PI technology gives our customers a significant economic advantage by typically executing the precise alignment essential for photonic devices one hundred times faster than any other solution. Since nanoscale alignment must be performed up to two dozen times in the photonic test and assembly process, this represents significant savings for our customers. We still have a lot of going on in the photonics market and the potential is clearly evident, which explains why our photonics strategy will increasingly prioritize product diversification.

The continued success of PI in the photonics industry has been an exceptional worldwide achievement, with significant contributions from PI colleagues across the globe. For instance, PI USA recently developed a new generation of exceptionally durable, long-range motorized stage systems, featuring state-of-the-art air bearings and multi-degree-of-freedom capabilities. This new solution was successfully presented at the SPIE Photonics West 2023 conference in San Francisco earlier this year.

Dr. Svetlana Khasminskaya

This has once again clearly shown how PI`s photonics development is a global endeavor with contributions from all around the world, for example, New England and California, USA, Yokneam Illit, Israel, and Karlsruhe, Germany. To accomplish this goal, contributors and key players like Dr. Svetlana Khasminskaya, Engineer System Application, have been quietly implementing and refining PI’s industry-leading FMPA technology on an innovative new architecture and platform that broadens and complements the capabilities of our award-winning F-712 product.

Allow me to introduce Dr. Svetlana Khasminskaya as an exemplary global contributor and expert who is helping to secure a sound future for PI leadership in photonics. In 2017, Svetlana joined PI after obtaining her PhD in Integrated photonics from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). During her time at PI, she has worked on various projects, including our photonics offering, proactively exploring, and evaluating new approaches and customer opportunities. Currently, she is utilizing her expertise to refine the technology and investigate its potential implementation in rapidly emerging fields such as silicon photonics, quantum computing, light detection and ranging (LIDAR), and photonic biosensors.

A company is only as good as its people, and PI’s future in photonics looks extremely bright indeed.

Out of the firm belief in the enormous potential of the segment, we want to focus the organization on providing a competitive and innovative offering in photonics via PI USA with high priority. We have been at the forefront of strategic discussions in this space and have the right network of customers and partners in place since many years. PI USA did very well in this market and will continue to address the photonics marketplace.

Florian Geistdörfer, Chief Operating Officer

Contact person: Scott Jordan, Photonics and Nano Automation Technologies

Written by Laura Früh on October 16, 2023