News: Optoelectronics
11 June 2021
Vector appoints principal device engineer
Vector Photonics Ltd (which was spun off from Scotland’s University of Glasgow in March 2020, based on research led by professor Richard Hogg) has appointed Dr Jon Orchard as principal device engineer. Orchard will help to fast-track the company’s photonic-crystal surface-emitting laser (PCSEL) technology into next-generation datacom, additive manufacturing and 3D printing markets.
“Dr Jon Orchard is a well-known and well-respected engineer in the photonics industry and a great asset to our business,” believes chief technology officer Dr Richard Taylor. “He will play a critical part in expediting our PCSEL device development, optimizing it for a fabless environment,” he adds.
“Jon brings extensive experience of compound semiconductor EEL [edge-emitting laser] and VCSEL [vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser] development and has worked on both active and passive photonic device fabrication,” Taylor continues. “He also has unique expertise in MOCVD [metal-organic chemical vapor deposition] and MBE [molecular beam epitaxy] products, machines and characterization equipment. This was gained whilst he was a KTP (Knowledge Transfer Partnership) candidate at the University of Glasgow, collaborating with CST Global (now Sivers Photonics) on their MOCVD development, where he later became a development engineer.”
Orchard has a degree in Solid State Devices and a PhD (‘Development of Electrically Pumped VECSELs’) from the University of Sheffield. His post-doctoral research on ‘Silicon based quantum dot (QD) lasers and light sources’ was an UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)-funded, collaborative project with University College London (UCL), Cardiff University and the University of Warwick. Orchard also has 18 published, peer-reviewed articles and many national and international conference credits to his name where he was the invited or guest-speaker.
Vector leading £1.5m BLOODLINE project to develop chips for 3D metal laser printers
