New CEO, Air Force grant, cryogenic achievements, launches with NASA, oh my! 

2024 was a banner year for the NLM Photonics team. We’ve made significant changes, invested in our robust team, pushed forward with innovative projects and partners, and continued to boldly lay the path for a photonic future. 

Taking the leadership reins with CEO Brad Booth 

Last April, cloud, AI/machine learning, and datacom technology veteran Brad Booth stepped into the CEO role. He’s been a shining star in believing in NLM’s vision and guiding our team.  

With our continued investment in our IP block business model, Brad’s vast knowledge of the greater ecosystem has pushed us and the industry. His connections and contributions have been invaluable to expand and solidify new and existing partnerships. We couldn’t be in better hands for 2025 and beyond. 

We thank co-founder and prior CEO Gerard Zytnicki for his five and a half years of service as CEO; he remains with the company as COO and will also run Marketing and Business Development. We look forward to his continued engagements with customers and the industry. 

$1.8 million U.S. Air Force AFWERX contract for silicon-organic hybrid electro-optic (EO) modulation technology development with AIM Photonics 

This award funds a 21-month project with AIM Photonics targeting offering NLM’s silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) modulators in AIM Photonics’ process design kits (PDKs) for devices on AIM’s 300 mm silicon photonics platform. SOH technology provides low-power, high-bandwidth EO modulation for datacom, RF photonics, quantum, sensing, and other applications for civilian and government customers. 

This past year has seen explosive market interest and investment in artificial intelligence (AI). The industry requires solutions to bend the bandwidth/power curve down, and energy-efficient EO modulation is a critical element for this. NLM’s hybrid organic technology holds the key to delivering the incredible possibilities of AI, machine learning, quantum, and beyond! 

Product advancements: cryogenic achievements on Earth and heading to space with NASA  

ETH Zürich used NLM’s HLD materials in plasmonic devices at cryogenic temperatures to great success and published their findings in June’s ACS Photonics.  

Their summary, “This work shows that plasmonic modulators are ideally suited for future high-speed, scalable, and energy-efficient photonic interconnects in cryogenic environments.” These cryogenic results show how NLM’s photonics advancements will play a critical role in these challenging environments, such as the $2 billion quantum computing market. 

Another incredibly challenging environment is space. Together with our partner AIM Photonics, we’ve developed SOH modulators through a NASA grant to deliver high modulation efficiency and low power consumption for spacecraft applications and to withstand everything thrown at them in an orbital environment. These chips, which were delivered in May, have also enabled key R&D and advances for terrestrial applications of our technology as well. 

In 2025, we cannot wait to surprise you! 

We brim with excitement over our outlook for the first part of 2025. In January, our team will attend SPIE Photonics West and Brad will present on a panel, New Materials for Wafer Scale Manufacturing of Optical Interconnects. Late March, early April will see the NLM team at the Optical Fiber Communications Conference (OFC) in San Francisco with a dedicated meeting room and demonstration space to connect with partners, industry peers, and other photonics enthusiasts.  

NASA will send the aforementioned chips featuring our photonic technology to the International Space Station in April. The chips will include NLM-developed NASA project chips plus plasmonic chips from our industry partner, Polariton. This orbital experiment will be the culmination of our grant work with NASA and AIM Photonics to build hybrid EO modulators to withstand the environmental extremes of space. (Rocket launch dates are fickle, so this date is tentative.) 

This is only the tip of the 2025 iceberg! NLM has worked diligently to prepare for greater customer and partner engagement. We look forward to continuing to put NLM’s technology into our customers’ hands and showing them the benefits of our technology and working with us. Stay tuned for more updates on our journey.