Emerging Resources For Photonic Device Manufacturing

The mainstreaming of photonics - the science and application of light waves - keeps accelerating. Pandemic-driven data-consumption has hastened adoption of silicon photonics (SiPh) to enable new capacity, architectural flexibility, and energy-efficiency for data centers.  Unlike the telephony-driven demand that fueled the first photonic boom in 1997-2002, today’s exponentiating broadband requirements are propelled by many disparate applications, from streaming media to social networks, personal medicine, genomics, and of course, the dreaded teleconferencing that sustained business and personal relationships throughout a difficult 2020. 

Soon, the world will be girdled by constellations of tens of thousands of low-orbit satellites using laser beams to transfer data around the planet and between each other to provide low-latency Internet access, all in service of mankind’s insatiable and growing appetite for data.  More of a surprise is the sudden implementation of photonic technologies in consumer and business applications such as photonic cables that offer conveniently long lengths while keeping pace with the latest high-speed, optical interface technologies (http://www.oeic.vn/capabilities.htm#auto-optical-alignment) and even bio-sensors built into wearables, such as the blood pressure/hydration/glucose sensors conjectured for coming generations of the Apple Watch (https://gadgetsandwearables.com/2021/05/02/rockley-apple-hydration/).