CoreTek Raises $6 Million in Venture Cap

Privately-held CoreTek Inc. (Burlington, MA) has secured $6 million in venture funding from Adams Capital Management (Sewickley, PA), Patricof Ventures (New York), and the Hillman Co. (Pittsburgh). CoreTek plans to use the money to begin production of tunable photonic devices based on its Mem-Tune variable-wavelength filtering technology, which has applications in dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM). The technology was originally developed by CoreTek under Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts sponsored by Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) and Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA).

Incorporating microelectromechanical (MEMS) components, Mem-Tune enables operations such as wavelength selection, wavelength switching, wavelength routing, and systems performance monitoring to be performed optically. These functions are currently performed by fixed wavelength filters, and require signal conversion from the optical domain to electrical domain and back again. All-optical performance will lead to significant cost reduction in applications such as telecommunications and cable television.

CoreTek's technology is capable of covering the entire bandwidth of current C-band DWDM systems (1535 nm-1565 nm) as well as the anticipated L-band (1570 nm-1620 nm) wavelengths.