10/12/2026
It’s Manufacturing Monday!
Each Monday in October, we will feature one of East Central Illinois’ manufacturers. Today, the spotlight is on Inprentus, Inc.!
Inprentus got their start with EnterpriseWorks at the University of Illinois back in 2012. They have since moved into a facility in Champaign. This unique company designs and manufactures custom diffraction gratings to be used in industries such as synchrotron and FEL research, semiconductor manufacturing, augmented reality, spectroscopy, and government.
Simply put - Inprentus' diffraction gratings act to tune and amplify light - for applications that analyze starlight, determine chemical composition, project light in AR glasses, separate components of laser light, and more!
Chief of Staff Cynthia Ottemann says that she “loves working in manufacturing because it is the embodiment of a collaborative effort- from identifying a need for a product, to designing and building the manufacturing equipment, to listening to customers and identifying their requirements, to manufacturing the product, to determining the quality of the finished product, to delivering the final product to the customer, and finally evaluating the performance of the product after it is in the customer's hands - this process is complex and takes a full team effort. Everyone in the building has a role to play in making and delivering the best product [they] can envision.”
The first picture below shows an apparatus that Inprentus uses to evaluate grating quality and properties, plus a DUV Semiconductor Grating that is being evaluated for quality assurance. The second and third pictures show finished gratings, which are the test gratings for the upcoming NASA ESIS-II mission that will study the properties of the solar corona and solar weather.
For more information on Inprentus, Inc., visit their website at https://inprentus.com .
