Knowing what photonics can do for your business is the first step. The next step is how to implement that knowledge into practical solutions for your industry.
To address these questions PHAPPS Week invites both businesses and photonics experts to host events and workshops on photonics integration.
When the first electric circuits were integrated on a chip in the late 1970s, the field of electronics underwent an enormous boost. Now there is Integrated Photonics!
Photonics technology is now at roughly the same phase in its development. Photonics foundries are producing the first photonic microchips, integrating different functionalities of light onto one single chip surface.
A photonic integrated circuit (PIC) or integrated optical circuit is a microchip containing two or more photonic components which form a functioning circuit. This technology detects, generates, transports, and processes light. Photonic integrated circuits utilize photons (or particles of light) as opposed to electrons that are utilized by electronic integrated circuits. The major difference between the two is that a photonic integrated circuit provides functions for information signals imposed on optical wavelengths typically in the visible spectrum or near infrared (850–1650 nm).
Compared to optical components, integrated optics offers the advantages of greatly reduced size as scaled by the footprint of an optical waveguide, more robust optical alignment, i.e., that carried out by the fabrication process itself, and the lower cost made possible by the massive parallelism of planar processing
Next generation microchips, powered by light
This development of photonics microchips – called ‘Integrated Photonics’ – clears the way for many new applications, while at the same time saving costs and space. This will make photonics devices smaller and cheaper, while at the same time increasing their functionality.
Are you interested to host your own Integrated Photonics event or partner with us, get in touch with us with this form.