Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Technology

Being one of the high technology companies in Estonia, VTT Optik produces quality measurement instruments used in the optical industry – interferometers. Such a fine instrument costs 100,000 – 400,000 euros.

Nikolai Voznesenskiy, the founder and managing director of VTT Optik, says that this is a very specific device used for measuring the quality of a range of precision optics.

Interferometry is the method for determining the properties of two or more lasers or waves by studying the pattern of interference created by their superposition. The instrument used to interfere with the waves is called an interferometer.

Interferometry is an important investigative technique in the fields of astronomy, fibre optics, engineering metrology, optical metrology, oceanography, seismology, quantum mechanics, nuclear and particle physics, and plasma physics.

At present, the technology of VTT Optik is in the process of being patented in Europe and the USA. This technology, according to Voznesenskiy, uses a spherical wavefront bended while passing through a pinhole as the reference surface. Such a reference surface ensures the greatest possible precision in measurements. The competitors in the field use an actual polished test plate as the reference surface, making which is a much less precise process and which must be protected, with great effort, from the slightest damage.

The interferometers of VTT Optik are unique due to the first known successful industrial use of the PDI principle (PDI being the acronym of ‘point diffraction interferometer’ wherein ‘point’ is the usual name for a pinhole). VTT interferometers are also stable as they are not sensitive to vibration and are quite convenient to use.

Interferometers are mainly produced in Europe, the USA and Asia i.e. in countries where precision optics products are manufactured. However, in recent times, the production of optics has moved to Asia – in countries which are ‘cheaper’ but offer, at the same time, good quality: Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and others.

The competitors of VTT Optik (which has only a couple of employees) – companies such as Zygo, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and has a turnover of over a billion kroons and employs more than 500 persons – are, according to Voznesenskiy, so large and powerful that they could push the tiny Estonian company out of competition at a stroke.

In the years to come, VTT Optik may become the target of a takeover for a larger competitor. "However, we might be the one to take over a larger competitor!" says Maria Voznesenskaja, the marketing manager of VTT Optik and daughter of the founder, with a smile.

Although an interferometer is a specific device, it has a significant market according to Nikolai Voznesenskiy. "High-quality optics are manufactured in thousands of factories. And they all need not just one but at least twenty interferometers."

There are impressive names among the partners and clients of VTT Optik.

The company itself stresses its cooperation with the Belarusian concern Planar Corporation, whose procurement for finding an interferometer was won by the Estonian company in 2007. The completed device was sent to Belarus last year.

An interferometer manufactured by VTT is being tested at KERI (Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute). One of the top clients of this research establishment is the South Korean electronics giant Samsung. A researcher from the Korean Institute, Kyeong Hee Lee, is a minority shareholder in VTT Optik.

The Estonian company has also recently developed increasingly close relations with Korea Polytechnic University (KPU).

At least a couple of interferometers manufactured in Tartu are now also being used in Europe. One of them is at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, where Russian scientists are working, in cooperation with the Japanese companies Nikon and Canon, on a lithography project. The other device in Europe is located in Brussels, at the international research centre ISTC, which is also cooperating with the Japanese.

For Samsung, VTT has manufactured software for measuring the quality of the data readers of DVD writers – which, in a way, also makes VTT a software producer.

Voznesenskiy says that the first six interferometers manufactured by the company are experimental in nature, to some extent. In consequence, while they provide precise results they can still be made much more convenient to use.

In Estonia, where the business of e-services of all kinds is flourishing, VTT feels it is in a good place as a producer of high-tech equipment. According to Voznesenskiy, Estonia has close technology relations with a range of countries and it is easy to order components here.

VTT plans, in the near future, to apply for support from Enterprise Estonia to manufacture a prototype of the device to show it to its clients. At the moment there are no interferometers in Tartu, as they have all been sent to the clients who need to use them. Voznesenskiy says that VTT will try to hire more engineers to continue active product development.

VTT's engineers also have at least one interesting idea for domestic consumers. They want to develop a handy instrument enabling anyone to assess the quality of the photo optics sold in stores.