Nanotechnology - Nano in Germany

Principal Office
AIFOTEC Fiberoptics GmbH
Herpfer Str. 40
D-98617 Meiningen
Germany
Phone: (+)49 - 36 93 88 13 175
Fax: (+)49 - 36 93 88 13 176
E-Mail: info@aifotec.com
Web: www.aifotec.com
Contact Person
Dr.-Ing. Gunther VOLLRATH
CEO
Phone: (+)49 - 36 93 88 13 150
Fax: (+)49 - 36 93 88 13 176
E-Mail: gunther.vollrath@aifotec.com
AIFOTEC GmbH is developing, producing and marketing fiberoptic components. Hereby the
focus lies on the application of new assembly technologies for the reduction of footprint, costs
and power dissipation.
Optoelectronic devices are nowadays mainly produced by means of laser welding. With this
technology all parts have to be aligned on some sort of optical bench and are then fixed by
welding with a laser beam. This leads to rather bulky components as all component holders
are made of steel parts for weldability and mechanical stability. All components have to be
aligned and fixed in the submicrometer range which leads to rather high material, personnel
and machine costs as well as reduced yield. The whole assembly is then packaged in a
hermetic housing with high frequency feed-throughs. This whole assembly setup has an
analogy to the “old days” of electronic components when radio tubes were standard devices.
In contrast to this setup AIFOTEC has developed a Silicon Platform Technology which,
in combination with innovative High Precision Laser Soldering Technology and image
recognition, enables high accuracy placements of photonic components. In combination with
innovative processes like Glueing and Globe Top Processes this gives a toolset which solves
the tradeoff between smaller devices with better performance and lower costs by using a
Hybrid Integrated Technology (HIT) approach.
AIFOTECʼs first product out of this technology toolset is the so-called Fibre Grating Laser
(FGL) which consists of a semiconductor gain element, integrated with a spot-size converter
(Spot Size Converter Laser, SSCL). With this unique setup the light can directly launched
into the fibre without any coupling elements like lenses, lensed fibres etc. The wavelength is
selected by a Bragg grating in the fibre. This Externally Cavity Laser (ECL) setup enables
high transmission distances, high modulation speeds and dense wavelength grid at low costs.
AIFOTEC also offers HIT development and manufacturing services for other products besides
the particular FGL (e.g. transmitter and receiver optical subassemblies) other platforms
(e.g. Silicon, Glass and Ceramics) and other markets besides fiberoptic tele- and datacom
applications (e.g. test & measurement, automotive etc.).
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