Posted: July 24, 2009

(Nanowerk News) The RUSNANO’s Supervisory Council has approved the corporation’s participation in a project that would found a high-tech enterprise manufacturing gallium-arsenide substrates, chips, and optical components based on vertically emitting lasers.

The primary products of the project will be chips and optical components based on vertically emitting lasers used in high bit rate optical transmission devices for local networks, active optical cables, supercomputers, and interconnects for the upcoming USB standards 3.0 and 4.0.

Corporation analysts predict that by 2014 the world market for optical components based on vertically emitting lasers will climb to $1.4 billion in revenue compared to the $300 million sold in 2008, this being a result of the replacement of copper interconnects by the faster, more compact and interference-free fiber optics.

With a chartered capital of 600 million rubles, the corporation intends to set up a St. Petersburg-based joint enterprise together with the technology developer and owner, VI-Systems GmbH (Germany), and an external financial co-investor. The corporation’s share in the project company will amount to 45.01%, VI-Systems GmbH – to 35%, and co-investor's – to 19.99%.

In addition, once tasks for the first phase have been completed successfully, the corporation will grant a loan of up to 500 million rubles to the enterprise for acquisition of epitaxial equipment required for expansion of production. Total project investment is planned to peak at 1.1 billion rubles.

Production startup is scheduled for the second quarter of 2011 with target capacity being reached in 2014 when expected revenues of the company will exceed 2.3 billion rubles.

As the Managing Director for RUSNANO Konstantin Demetriou has observed, the implementation of this project will allow for the establishment in Russia of a world-leading company in the global market of vertically emitting lasers and provide incentive for the country’s development of other related hi-tech products - from integrated circuits to active optical cables.

Scientific support for the project in Russia will be provided by the Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute (St. Petersburg), Saint-Petersburg Physics and Technology scientific and educational center of Russian Academy of Science and the Institute of Semiconductor Physics of SB RAS (Novosibirsk).

VI-Systems GmbH., Germany, is a private innovation and research company founded by former members of the Technical University of Berlin and the Ioffe Institute. Company shareholders are made up of individuals and the Stars Innovation AG investment fund.