Berxel Photonics Co. Ltd.

Berxel Photonics Co., Ltd. (), commonly known as Berxel Photonics or Berxel, is a Chinese optoelectronic semiconductor company headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong. It develops and manufactures vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), optical components employing metasurface and high-contrast-grating technology, and structured-light cameras used for optical communications, industrial automation, robotics and three-dimensional sensing.

The company was founded by electrical engineer Constance J. Chang-Hasnain, whose academic research has included VCSELs, tunable semiconductor lasers, nanophotonics and high-contrast gratings. Berxel's research has focused particularly on increasing the data-transmission speed of VCSELs and using polarization to reduce depth-measurement errors caused by glass, mirrors, water and other reflective surfaces.

History

Founding and early financing

Shenzhen Berxel Photonics was incorporated on 19 December 2018. The company was founded by Taiwanese-American electrical engineer Constance J. Chang-Hasnain, a longtime professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who became its chairperson. The company began operating commercially in 2019, concentrating initially on VCSEL chips for consumer-electronics and 3D-sensing applications.

In 2019, Berxel received a Series A investment from TusStar, Green Pine Capital Partners and SummitView Capital, among other investors. In March 2020, it announced a Series A+ round valued at nearly RMB100 million. The round was led by Harvest Capital, with participation from Legend Star, Leaguer Group, Hongtai Fund and E-Town Capital. Berxel said that the money would be used to expand production and develop new products.

Contemporary reports described the company as having developed capabilities in VCSEL-device design, epitaxy, semiconductor oxidation processes and product testing. Its early products were aimed at facial recognition, augmented and virtual reality, smart-home systems, security equipment and direct time of flight (dToF) sensing.

In January 2021, Berxel completed successive Series B and B+ rounds collectively reported as amounting to several hundred million yuan. The Series B round was led by semiconductor company Montage Technology, while the B+ round was led by Oriental Fortune Capital and Shenzhen Capital Group. Other investors included Lingang Innovation Management and existing investors E-Town Capital and TusStar.

Commercial development

By 2021, the company's reported product portfolio included 940-nanometre VCSEL chips for structured light, indirect and direct time-of-flight sensing and automotive lidar, together with 850-nanometer chips for optical communications and cloud-computing infrastructure.

At the 2023 China International Optoelectronic Exposition in Shenzhen, Berxel demonstrated an 800-gigabit optical transceiver using its 106-Gbit/s pulse-amplitude-modulated VCSELs. The company reported a transmission distance of 100 meters over OM4 multimode fiber and between 60 and 100 meters over older OM2 and OM3 fiber. At the time, its 53-Gbit/s-per-lane VCSEL array had entered volume production, while the 106-Gbit/s device was available for customer sampling.

In 2026, the Securities Times reported that Berxel had shipped more than six million high-speed VCSEL devices and more than 300,000 3D-vision products. The report said its 3D cameras had been deployed in industrial-robotics applications. Berxel was also developing 200-Gbit/s-class VCSELs and working with partners on near-packaged optics and co-packaged optics, although those systems remained at the sample-validation and engineering-development stages.

Technology and research

VCSEL development

A VCSEL emits light perpendicular to the surface of a semiconductor wafer, in contrast to an edge-emitting laser, which emits from the side of the chip. Berxel develops VCSELs primarily at wavelengths of 850 and 940 nanometers. Its communications products have included 25-Gbit/s non-return-to-zero devices and 53- and 106-Gbit/s four-level pulse-amplitude modulation devices.

Part of the company's work is based on high-contrast gratings, also described in later research as high-contrast metastructures. These nanoscale structures can replace one of the conventional distributed Bragg reflectors in a VCSEL. The grating can be designed to control the emitted spatial mode, polarization and beam profile while reducing the thickness of the optical element.

In 2022, a Berxel research team reported transmitting a 106-Gbit/s PAM-4 signal over 300 meters of OM3 multimode fiber using an 850-nanometre, high-contrast-grating few-mode VCSEL. The result was presented at the European Conference on Optical Communication.

In 2023, Berxel researchers and collaborators reported what they described as the first electrically pumped VCSEL producing circularly polarized emission at room temperature without spin injection or an externally applied magnetic field. The device used a chiral metasurface as its top reflector.

A 2024 article in Optica described an 850-nanometre single-mode VCSEL made with a chirped high-contrast metastructure. The graded reflector suppressed higher-order modes, and the device transmitted a 106-Gbit/s PAM-4 signal through single-mode optical fiber. The researchers presented it as a possible means of extending short-reach optical links without requiring multimode fiber with substantially increased bandwidth.

In 2026, Berxel and university collaborators presented 850-nanometre VCSEL results supporting 112-Gbit/s non-return-to-zero and 200-Gbit/s PAM-4 optical interconnections.

Polarization-structured-light imaging

Berxel has also applied high-contrast-grating VCSELs to polarization-structured-light depth imaging. Conventional structured-light systems can produce incorrect depth measurements when projected light undergoes multiple reflections from glass, metal, mirrors or water. Berxel's system emits linearly polarized patterned light and analyzes polarization at the receiver to separate direct illumination from multipath reflections.

The design described in Nature Communications used a high-contrast-grating VCSEL illuminator and a polarization-sensitive receiver. The researchers demonstrated improved reconstruction of objects and scenes containing mirrors, transparent materials and highly reflective surfaces. The company subsequently commercialized the approach in its iHawk and mHawk camera families. Listed variants use USB or Ethernet connections and are marketed for robotics, logistics, manufacturing and other automated systems.

Recognition

Berxel's iHawk P100 polarization-structured-light camera was named one of the 2024 R&D 100 Awards winners in the information-technology/electrical category. R&D World described the system as combining a high-contrast-grating VCSEL transmitter with a metasurface polarizer integrated with a CMOS image sensor, allowing the camera to reduce multipath errors when imaging reflective objects.

Operations

Berxel's headquarters and principal research-and-testing operation are in Shenzhen. The company also operates through Zhejiang Berxel Photonics Co., Ltd., which has been identified in research publications as maintaining an academician workstation in Jiaxing, Zhejiang. A Hong Kong affiliate, Hong Kong Berxel Photonics Co., Limited, was incorporated in May 2020.