Corporate - News

October 2004

Optocap Clinches Second Project As Deals Line Up

OPTOCAP, Scotland’s optoelectronics centre of excellence, has signed up its second major university research project, and is on the verge of taking on another four.

The Livingston-based optoelectronics packaging centre, set up a year ago with the aim of taking nine university research projects to market by summer 2006, has signed up a project from the University of Strathclyde’s Institute of Photonics.

From next month, Optocap is preparing to assist the Institute’s Professor Martin Dawson to develop suitable packaging for his Vecsel technology - a “vertical external cavity surface-emitting laser” which has a range of applications in instrumentation, engineering and bioscience.

Optocap’s chief executive David Ruxton said: “Basically it’s a type of microchip laser that can produce relatively high-power outputs, with an extremely high-quality beam, which is basically unique.

“While the technology is there, they need assistance with the design of a manufacturable package, which is exactly what we specialise in.”

Optoelectronics - a technology which combines the physics of light with that of electricity - is a high growth sector in Scotland, with about 50 hi-tech companies employing more than 4,000 people. To the Scottish economy, the sector is worth at least £800 million.

Despite coming up with a vast array of groundbreaking research, Scotland’s universities have until recently been relatively poor at actual commercialisation of their findings.

Through a combination of Scottish Enterprise and European Regional Development Fund money, Optocap was set up last year to bridge the gap between research and manufacturing.

However, according to Ruxton, the latest deal, which comes on top of one with hi-tech data transfer company Conjunct, is just a taster of things to come.

“We’re in discussions with 13 projects from various universities at the moment,” he said. “We have agreements in principle with four of them, and while we haven’t actually signed on the dotted line yet, I’m pretty comfortable they’re going to happen.”

While Optocap received a total of £4.06m in funding to both set up and see through the nine projects, commercial applications are also part of its remit. The highest profile client so far is Edinburgh-based MicroEmmissive Displays, which recently announced IPO plans.