Blog

SuperLight Photonics chief commercial officer Jeroen Biesterbos speaks to Microelectronics UK on the landscape for integrated photonics and enabling the next generation of optical imaging systems. Many thanks to Jerome for providing these answers and a mention to Elly Schietse for help with liaising.

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Tell us about your role and what SuperLight Photonics does - what problems are you solving, and for whom?

As chief commercial officer of SuperLight Photonics, my role is to translate the unique strengths of our photonics technology into products that solve real-world engineering challenges. That means working closely with customers, partners, suppliers, and our engineering team to ensure our technology delivers value in demanding applications.

Superlight Photonics develops laser light sources with a very wide spectral range, using a Photonic Integrated Chip (PIC). As a result our products are more stable, smaller and scalable compared to legacy wideband lasers and enable the next generation of optical imaging systems for non-destructive testing (NDT) in industrial, medical, scientific, and agricultural markets. Our products are used in applications such as Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), spectroscopy and hyperspectral imaging, where image quality, and acquisition speed are fundamentally limited by the light source.

What are the defining technical and operational pressures facing your sector right now - and where do you see the industry underestimating the challenge?

Performance expectations continue to rise while customers expect systems to become smaller, more robust and easier to integrate. That is a difficult combination but we accept the challenge!

One challenge the industry still tends to underestimate is the importance of the light source itself. Considerable attention is often paid to detectors, optics and software, but the performance ceiling of an imaging system is frequently determined by the source. If the illumination lacks stability, bandwidth or spectral quality, no amount of downstream processing can fully recover that information.

Which application areas or end markets present the strongest near-term opportunity for your technology, and what is driving that demand?

We see industrial non-destructive testing and process control as  one of our strongest growth areas. In a world with increased competition, scarce resources and inflation we see manufacturing getting more data-driven to improve performance and reduce cost. To collect data, more, and more advanced sensing capabilities are developed and our light sources are a key enabler.

Which emerging technologies or engineering approaches are you backing for the next three to five years - and what would it take for them to cross from promising to mainstream?

It is pretty exciting to engage with research and emerging suppliers in the field of integrated photonics as they can further enhance our offerings, and/or further reduce the size, weight and cost of our products. We see integrated photonics getting a lot of tailwind from the datacom market: more choice, economies of scale and a push for reliability. So demonstrating repeatability and reliability will be a precondition to become mainstream.

Events like Microelectronics UK bring together engineers, researchers, and industry decision-makers under one roof. How valuable is that kind of in-person concentration of expertise to you and your team?

For SuperLight Photonics events like Photonics UK provide the opportunity to making ourselves known in-person to a wide and diversified audience. This really stimulates the creative process, provides a lot of new insights and opportunities for collaboration.

What do you want engineers and technical buyers to come away understanding about SuperLight Photonics after speaking with you at the show - and what conversations are you expecting to have on the floor?

We want to show wideband lasers can be tailored to new use cases outside of its traditional lab environment when using photonic ICs. For instance in Optical Coherence Tomography our solutions allow for high resolution, high throughput defect detection.

SuperLight Photonics' light sources are more compact, safer, and easier to integrate than conventional alternatives, enabling scalable deployment across inspection systems.

Is there a leader, engineer, or mentor who has shaped how you approach your work - and what is the most enduring lesson you took from them?

A former manager had a simple philosophy: skills get you in the room, trust determines whether people want to see you again. I've found that trust is built through consistency: doing what you say you will do, being honest when things don't go as planned, and giving others credit when it's due.

What does the next 12 months look like for SuperLight Photonics - in terms of product direction, capability expansion, or where you are focusing development resource?

We continue to expand our chip-based capabilities, we spend time on refining our current portfolio and tailoring it even more towards the needs of the markets in collaboration with system integrators. This means wider and flatter spectral distributions, increased spectral stability and a further reduction in size, weight to facilitate system integration. Besides that, we also plan for a variety of exciting new products, such as a wideband laser in the visible wavelength regime. Stay tuned!