The FEMTOPRINT® microfabrication platform is a leading technology in the scene of industrial micro-fabrication processes, based on a subtractive and direct writing technique exploiting ultrafast laser and wet etching development of glass materials. The printing platform enables a broad range of capabilities such as truly free-form surface/volume definition, optical patterns in glass bulk, surface treatments, ablation of thin films in three-dimensions, selective encapsulation of glass-to-glass and glass-to-multi-materials. The ability to create advanced 3D microsystems in a broad range of glass materials come with a process resolution down to one-micron, aspect ratios > 1:500, high repeatability, throughput, and surface quality down to Sa < 10 nm. As such, it addresses the needs of microfluidic, micromechanical, and micro-optical applications in medical, biotech, aerospace, automotive, optics, photonics, watchmaking, and other industries, where miniaturization, alignment and assembly challenges are tackled with a monolithic, and free-form approach in a biocompatible, inert, and mechanically stable glass material.

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Bio

Rolando Ferrini (Chief Regional Officer & Head of FEMTOprint Neuchâtel) joined FEMTOprint in 2022 as Chief Regional Officer and Head of FEMTOprint Neuchâtel, the new subsidiary devoted to the development and commercialization of photonic-related microdevices in glass. In 1999, he obtained his PhD degree in Physics at the Università degli Studi di Pavia, Pavia, Italy, with a thesis on the optical properties of III-V semiconductor materials for electronics and optoelectronics. From 2000 to 2004, he worked as Research Associate at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland, where he studied the optical properties of semiconductor-based photonic crystal devices. From 2004 to 2011, as Senior Research Associate at EPFL, he was in charge of the activities on organic devices for optics, photonics and lighting. From 2011 to 2022, he worked at CSEM as Group Leader MicroNano Optics and, from 2021 to 2022, also as Head of the Focus Area Photonics. From 2020 to 2021 he founded the PHABULOuS pilot line for the manufacturing of freeform micro-optical components, acting as coordinator of the corresponding H2020 project PHABULOuS and as Managing Director of the pilot line.