Company History and Overview
Heptagon was founded in 1993 as a spin-off from Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, by a group of world-leading experts in diffractive optics. During the 1990's this group led several research and development programs aimed at developing applications for this promising new technology. In 2000, Heptagon acquired the replicated micro-optics department of CSEM in Zurich, Switzerland. This department, formerly part of an RCA research laboratory, had decades of experience in UV-replication and mastering technologies, which form the core of the REEMO® technology which Heptagon has since developed and industrialized. In the early part of this decade, as these manufacturing processes became the focal point of the company, the company headquarters shifted from Finland to Switzerland.core of the REEMO technology
In the early 2000's Heptagon had a primary focus on delivering Telcordia-qualified microlens arrays for applications such as parallel optical transceivers/receivers and optical switches. New applications for Heptagon's technology, such as LED beam-shaping and CMOS image sensing, then began to emerge. In particular, the Heptagon REEMO® technology has a very strong value proposition in mobile phone cameras. Heptagon technology enabled mass production of the smallest mobile phone camera in the world. The small size of Heptagon's mobile phone imaging lens solutions, and the tremendous cost-savings driven by SMT-compatible optics, which can be assembled on wafer-scale, led to exponentially growing demand for Heptagon imaging lenses.REEMO technology
Dedicated to serve increasing customer base in the USA and Canada as well as to search novel applications with world's leading technology companies, Heptagon opened an office in Silicon Valley in 2006.
With the scalability of Heptagon's processes, we were able to ramp production to produce several millions of optical elements per month in 2007 in our small facility and with a small team in Rueschlikon, just outside Zurich. However, as we saw that demand would become an order of magnitude higher, we made the decision to invest in a dedicated high-volume manufacturing facility in Singapore. This ISO-9001 and ISO-14001 certified facility, operational since late 2007, now serves also as our regional headquarters in Asia, close to many of our customers and our supply chain partners.
Heptagon has developed and proven the world's first high-volume, low-cost wafer-scale technology which is in the same format as the CMOS sensor, LED and VCSEL opto-electronics platforms we support. Going forward, we plan to continue to work closely with our blue-chip customers in these fields to enable ever smaller and cheaper solutions for complete opto-electronic modules.