BUSINESS PROFILE The finest in
Spectrogon has been leading the way in optical filters and associated products for decades, as Warren Clark discovers
filters Reine Karlsson, Spectrogon’s head of sales and marketing S 8
pectrogon, the Swedish manufacturer of optical interference filters, optical coatings and holographic diffraction gratings,
has its roots back in the late 1960s. Research on optical thin film at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and at AGA, a major Swedish industrial group, eventually led to the creation of Spectrogon – a company that, by the late 1980s, had become a subsidiary of the Spectra Physics group. The company remained part of Spectra Physics until 1991, when a management buyout ensured Spectrogon was an independent company. By this time, the company already owned a production facility – and in 2002 this was expanded further with the acquisition of a second production facility in Arninge, north of Stockholm. This factory
ELECTRO OPTICS l FEBRUARY 2013
was enhanced in 2011 with the addition of 400 sqm of office space, which facilitated last year’s relocation of the main headquarters operations to Arninge. According to Reine Karlsson, head of sales and marketing, optical filters make up the majority of the company’s business today, with the most popular application being gas analysis. ‘Our core business has always been the manufacture of optical interference filters in the visible, near infrared and infrared range,’ says Karlsson. ‘Around 80 per cent of our sales are to OEM customers, and we are particularly strong in the infrared business.’ Within the filters market, Spectrogon also
has interests in thermal imaging and night vision applications, environmental monitoring, grain filters, moisture sensing and some laser applications. The filters enable particular
wavelengths to be selected, depending on the specific application. For holographic diffraction gratings,
Spectrogon claims to be the world leader in the manufacture of pulse compression gratings. ‘Here, a pair of gratings is used to create very short laser pulses with high energy,’ explains Karlsson. ‘This opens up applications in areas such as multiphoton fluorescence, multiphoton polymerisation, femtosecond spectroscopy, and laser ablation. For laser ablation in particular, this technique is still state-of-the-art compared to alternative methods. In recent years, this market has shown steady growth.’ The company’s gratings products include those for the telecoms industry, and those for monochromators. At its most basic level, a holographic diffraction grating splits different
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