IMMI Starts Production of its First ASIC-Integrated MEMS Optical Product

MONROVIA, Calif., June 6 -- With proceeds from its recent round of equity financing ($45 Million), Integrated Micromachines Inc. (IMMI) has completed renovation and moved into its permanent location in Monrovia, Calif. This facility is a 70,000 square foot industrial building with a 20,000 square foot Class-100 clean room specially designed for high volume MEMS manufacturing.
IMMI has started production of its first optical product, a high performance high reliability dual-channel variable optical attenuator (VOA), based on its ASIC-integrated MEMS technology dubbed ELITE (Extremely Low-loss Inductive Torsional Engine), which utilizes single-crystal silicon and electromagnetic actuation.
Besides manufacturing the VOA and other switching components, IMMI's flagship product is a small form factor 256 x 256 all-optical cross-connect (OXC) subsystem, allowing two redundant copies to fit in a single telecom rack. The distinguishing features of IMMI's OXC product are low-insertion loss (< 3 dB) and a high level of MEMS/ASIC integration, which are made possible by the excellent optical quality of single-crystal silicon and the low drive voltage of electromagnetic actuation.