Heptagon shipping 100 millionth CMOS imager lens

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND: Heptagon, the pioneer and world-leader in wafer-scale micro-optics, will ship its 100 millionth wafer-scale, reflowable lens for CMOS Imaging applications within the current month.

Almost all of these lenses have been shipped for use in mobile handset cameras, where the size and SMT compatibility of the lenses provide a tremendous advantage for handset manufacturers.

“Heptagon has a truly unique and proven value proposition: Optics which are glass-like in quality, being lead-free reflow and Telcordia compatible, but manufactured in the same wafer-scale format as the CMOS image sensor, LED and VCSEL technologies we support. This technology allows us to quickly ramp from several millions to several tens of millions of components per month and enables our customers to benefit from wafer-scale integration of optics with semiconductors,” says Chuck Milligan, Heptagon’s CEO.

“The benefits of our technology have driven the demand for these first 100 million units, and the scalability of the technology has enabled us to meet this demand.”

“The lens solutions we are shipping have progressed from simple, but extremely tiny, singlet lenses to stacks of lenses enabling high-quality VGA and Megapixel resolutions,” Chuck continues.

“Shipping 100 million lenses is a significant milestone for Heptagon, and we believe it places us well ahead of any of our followers in wafer-scale lens technology. With strong continuing demand for current products, and a number of new products ranging from VGA to 8+ megapixel in the pipeline, we expect to be announcing over two hundred million of lenses shipped within the next few quarters and to continue growing from there.

“We continue to enable and progress a strong shift in the mobile CMOS Imaging market to reflowable wafer-level optics and wafer-level camera assembly, providing our customers with a competitive advantage in the miniaturization and cost-reduction of CMOS Imagers and enabling exciting new applications for these high-performance mini-cameras.”