Photonic Dawn

Electronic sunset?

Photonic Blessings

Photonic chips require no high-end lithography and can be produced with Chinese IP on mature, indigenous technology and equipment. China already makes all the components for photonic chips, and its specialty foundries produce photonic chips for critical applications. Moreover, China is already the world's largest optical communication market, growing from $800 million in 2017 to $2 billion today,

In addition to greatly speeding computation, integrated photonics enables lab-on-a-chip (LOC) technology, putting laboratories into doctors’ hands. Amazec Photonics’ fiber optic sensor with photonic chips allow doctors to measure both cardiac output and circulating blood volume from outside the body. PICs facilitate communication between vehicles and urban infrastructure to improve driver safety, and can detect different quantities, such as pressure, temperature, vibrations, accelerations, and mechanical strain.

PhotonFirst PICs measure shape changes in airplanes, EV battery temperature, and infrastructure strain. PICs can measure variables beyond the range of the human eye, allowing the food supply chain to detect disease, ripeness and nutrients in fruit and plants. It can also help food producers to determine soil quality and plant growth, and measure CO2 emissions. MantiSpectra’s analyzer fits into a smartphone and can analyze chemical constituents of products like milk and plastics.

Chinese researchers are confident that they have solved the packaging cost problem and will open the first mass production line for "multi-material and cross-size" photonic chips this year, currently being built by Beijing-based Sintone.

Implications

The fab will give China first-mover advantage in a 21st century industry and, probably, as many decades of PIC dominance as America had with ICs.

IC demand will continue to rise, but a Chinese photonic success would alter the balance of power in the world, while simultaneously removing Taiwan as a bone of contention.

Win-win-win.

For China, anyway.

Notes

• Silicon Photonics: Columbia Prof. Karen Bergman on the Why, How and When of a Technology that Could Transform HPC. Inside HPC

• "Efficient photonic chip fabrication with 2.5D printing" by L. Zhang et al. (Nature Communications, June 5, 2021)

• "Superior photonic chip fabrication using 2D material-coated microring resonators" by M. Li et al. (Light: Science & Applications, May 15, 2021)

• "High-throughput photonic chip fabrication using femtosecond laser processing" by Y. Cheng et al. (Applied Physics Letters, April 15, 2021)