INTERVIEW I II-VI
II-VI: The laser years In the second of a pair of features to mark the fiftieth anniversary of II-VI, Chuck Mattera, the current CEO, looks back at the diversification of the company’s offerings through the introduction and expansion of its laser portfolio INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD STEVENSON RS: Your involvement with II-VI started long before you took over as CEO in 2016. Back in 2000, when working at Lucent Technologies Bell Laboratories, you started a two-year stint on the II-VI board, offering your expertise surrounding a variety of InP and GaAs laser diode technologies. At that time, how much progress had been made on the laser side of the business?
networks. Whether they were 1480-nanometre pumps or 980-nanometre pumps, or both, they were ending up inside an amplifier for a long-haul network. I was aware that IPG was figuring out ways to combine these pumps to cut steel. The workhorse of II-VI at that time was CO2 laser optics, used by the Industry 3.0 infrastructure for cutting up to 25-millimetre-thick steel.
II-VI: When I came into the company as a board member, I was coming from a perspective of a company making semiconductor laser components and fibre amplifier subsystems for communication
We had to ask ourselves the questions, ‘Is the onemicron laser an opportunity, is it a threat, or is it both? How should we think about it, from a strategic point of view?’ Well before I got here, on the heels of the invention of the YAG laser, which operates at 1064 nanometres, II-VI realised that one-micron solid-state lasers were also going to be important. So II-VI acquired two small materials companies: Virgo Optics, in 1995, and Lightning Optical Corporation, in 1996. Those acquisitions of Virgo and Lightning created the wellknown II-VI VLOC. VLOC became a division, and Fran [Kramer, who went on to be the company’s second CEO] had a lot to do with that. I think it was the beginning of the company starting to cut its teeth on acquisitions: how to stage them, how to execute them, and how to integrate them. RS: In 2004, you joined II-VI as Vice President, with a charter to establish a compound semiconductors capability. You have been with the company ever since. What did you work on to begin with?
The acquisition of Anadigics in 2016 enabled II-VI to increase its production of VCSELs. 38 ISSUE VIII 2021
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II-VI: Fran and Carl [Johnson, co-founder and CEO at that time] encouraged me to think long-term about one-micron solid-state lasers and fibre lasers. We had this strategic challenge, and the future was unclear, but we acted on what our board also believed was an opportunity to transform the company. They encouraged us to take the long-term view, including
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