With more than two decades of business now behind it, Spectrum Scientific Inc (SSI) passes the midway mark of the 2020s with a strong order book and a solid reputation for manufacturing high-volume, flat, aspheric and freeform reflective optics, hollow retroreflectors and holographic diffraction gratings.
CEO and President Daphnie Chakran helms the company, which operates in a range of sectors such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, semiconductor and telecommunications, and says the outlook is positive. “I would say there has been an increase in customers coming along that are looking for the next generation of design; it's been an interesting year, with a lot of R&D focus based on that,” she told Electro Optics at Photonics West 2025. “We have spent a lot of time getting prototypes ready, and it has been fascinating to see some of the unique designs that our teams have been coming up with for customers.”
One of those customers is, of course, NASA. It is trying out different materials in that most extreme of environments – space – and working with SSI on testing multiple surface functionalities onto a single optical surface. Freeform gratings are being used here and that is attracting a lot of attention.
Across the past two decades – SSI launched in 2004 – there have inevitably been peaks and troughs of product development, balanced by necessity with the subsequent push to then get all of that development into scale production. “We've introduced new products such as the hollow retroreflectors in the past that took a lot of focus, but the past year has been very varied,” says Chakran. Some of those retroreflectors are being put into low-earth orbit satellites, which helps track their position. It’s an exciting example of SSI’s product in action, but the company’s application influence is much broader. “We are a component manufacturer, so we go into so many different markets, and we're a little better safeguarded because of that range from the business extremes,” she told Electro Optics.
“Of course, product development comes from a lot of different directions. For example, we have plenty of longstanding customers that we have been talking to about freeforms for some time and they finally decided to do the designs, perhaps because of their increasing use elsewhere.” Inevitably, some of the interest in what NASA is doing is driving that.
In terms of SSI’s focus for the future, it’s a broad spectrum. The previous push on relentless miniaturisation appears less intense than it was: “Some of the big instrument manufacturers don't now have to get [the optics] that small, and the difference between a few centimetres isn't going to make a great difference, but it’s a very varied outlook in terms of technology priorities or product development. But, overall, I would say the market headline is that everyone’s still excited about freeform.
Replicating optical surfaces
“In general terms, we’re still trying to get new customers to really understand the capabilities of what a company such as us and our products can do. We're a replication house and that's one of our strong positions. If we replicate optical surfaces onto, for example, a metal mount, it's easy to see where there is money-saving to be found during assembly and alignment.
“Becoming cheaper sometimes remains a really big driver in the sector once you go into volume productions for customers. We make the masters in-house and we replicate from there.” This capability allows SSI to supply high-fidelity, high-specification precision optics at a lower cost compared to traditional volume manufacturing. Anyone sourcing this sort of product knows the volumes of those orders can be highly sensitive in terms of choosing the right supplier. SSI supports complex instrumentation opportunities of less than 50 right up into runs that number in the tens-of-thousands-per-annum range.
Its plane, concave and convex holographic diffraction gratings, which can be supplied using a unique blazing technique, offer high UV efficiency as well as lower stray light when compared to conventional ion-etched gratings. SSI has previously supplied ultra-low stray light gratings for a number of prestigious projects such as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, also for NASA.
The company’s manufacturing is done on-site in southern California, USA, and Chakran admits customers come back to her facility because they value its reliability and long-standing reputation for delivering excellent products at competitive rates.
The focus for 2025 is exploring new markets that SSI isn’t routinely servicing, as well as improving market share in those where the company already has a large stake. It brings to that strategy a largely unique position: “There are only a handful of companies that actually do the mastering and the replications of these very precise optics, and we’re one of them,” says Chakran.
The pressure on supply chain disruption might have eased, but recruitment and retention of staff remains a challenge for everyone – although Chakran can cite two members of staff that have been with the company right from the beginning. That long service offers the opportunity for long-term relationship building, which can mitigate against missing a stage of the production process that’s still sometimes overlooked: project dialogue right at the beginning of the thinking. Those speculative, exploratory conversations still sometimes start too late, confirms Chakran. “I always value it when customers – or potential customers – come to talk to us early in the process. Those conversations with system engineers and optical engineers make the projects work so much better. It has to be more of a partnership.”
With increasing interest in VUV and DUV, visitors to SSI’s stand at Photonics West 2025 could see how the application range for its products continues to grow. While the projects in space rightly continue to attract headline attention, this innovative firm is well positioned to capitalise on the inevitable trickle-down of interest and application for freeform into the commercial markets that it creates.
