Laser breakthrough rewrites the rules of photonics manufacturing

FreeForm Photonics is set to commercialise a laser-based process that builds alignment directly into optical glass components, removing the painstaking manual calibration that currently accounts for more than half of all photonics production costs.

The result is a manufacturing pathway that is faster, cheaper and precise to sub-micron tolerances, a scale far smaller than the width of a human hair. It also removes the complexity that has long made photonic systems prohibitively expensive to scale.

The implications stretch across some of the most consequential technologies of the coming decade. Sectors like Quantum computing systems, next-generation medical diagnostics and the optical communications infrastructure underpinning the modern internet. These all depend on photonic components that are currently largely assembled by hand.

Dr Calum Ross, Research Fellow in the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, said: "By integrating passive alignment features into the glass components themselves, we are fundamentally changing what it takes to manufacture high-performance optics. The potential applications range from fibre optic sensing in the harshest industrial environments to enabling the quantum computing systems that the world is racing to build."

Traditional photonics assembly demands either painstaking manual adjustment or costly active alignment systems, each introducing risk, time and expense at every stage. FreeForm Photonics has removed that dependency entirely, embedding precision into the component from the outset.

FreeForm Photonics has now secured funding through Scottish Enterprise's High Growth Spinout Programme to create a high growth and scalable future company and prepare for seed investment.

Derek Shaw, Director of Entrepreneurship and Investment at Scottish Enterprise, said: “FreeForm Photonics is a great example of how Scotland’s supportive innovation ecosystem system can help turn cutting-edge research into global opportunity. Its breakthrough technology has the potential to transform photonic manufacturing and drive progress across quantum, healthcare and communications.

“We’re proud to have supported the team through our High Growth Spinout Programme, helping them strengthen their commercial approach and get investment ready. We look forward to continuing to work with the company as its scales and realises its global ambition.”

Entering a global photonic components market valued at close to $1 billion in 2024 and forecast to grow sharply, the team already has more than 100 industry leaders and prospective customers who have assessed the technology, with strong appetite to adopt it at medium-volume production scale. Trial samples are also being supplied to customers in aerospace, telecommunications and healthcare.

Professor Gillian Murray, Deputy Principal for Enterprise and Business at Heriot-Watt University, said: "As a university with a global reach and a deep commitment to enterprise, we are uniquely placed to help turn pioneering research into real commercial impact. FreeForm Photonics is a clear example of that in action, taking a genuinely novel capability developed here at Heriot-Watt and building it into something with the potential to reshape how photonic components are made worldwide.

"Through our entrepreneurial programmes and business support, we are working to strengthen Scotland's innovation ecosystem and back the kind of high-growth businesses that can compete on the global stage. FreeForm Photonics has the science, the team and the market interest to do exactly that, and we are proud to be part of its journey from the lab to commercial scale."