These quickly expanding industries, including big data centers, Industry 4.0, and personalized healthcare, have one thing in common: they require miniaturized photonic components. These integrated or miniature photonic parts provide methods for sensing, transmitting, and processing data.
Integrated photonic component production, alignment, and assembly technologies are constantly developing. Markets and manufacturers are frequently tiny, making investments in particular solutions rather constrained. As a result, several issues need to be resolved to allow for the continued growth of this promising technology.
First, when feasible, existing semiconductor or telecom industry processes must be used to create new integrated photonic components. Both industries have developed extensive production methods and profit greatly from them. We have all witnessed the development of fiber lasers for material processing, founded on telecom component technology.
Second, the expanding group of mostly small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) working on photonic integrated components can look for public and private financing to hasten the development of the technology. It needs to be application-driven; the citizens and their elected officials demand it.
He concluded that replacing the different proposed materials, such as silicon or indium phosphide, with polymer technology would be preferable. Polymer-based components can be made in smaller batches with greater margins and transmit more wavelengths.
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