Sector
Deep tech, quantum computing, advanced materials, and emerging science.
Photonics
Technology manipulating light for communications and computing
The field
At a glance
Definition
Technology manipulating light for communications and computing
Technologies
Silicon photonics integrates optical components on standard semiconductor wafers. LiDAR uses laser pulses to create 3D maps of environments. Optical interconnects move data between chips at the speed of light. Photonic computing performs certain computations using light for massive energy efficiency gains. Fiber sensing uses existing fiber optic cables as distributed sensors.
Applications
Optical transceivers move terabits of data between data center servers. LiDAR creates 3D maps for autonomous vehicles and industrial robots. Fiber sensing detects ground disturbances along pipeline and border routes. Photonic processors perform AI inference with 10-100x energy efficiency.
Market and funding
Photonics serves applications in telecommunications, computing, sensing, healthcare, and defense where light-based technologies offer fundamental advantages over electronics. With 8 funders. The market is being supercharged by AI's demand for optical interconnects.
Next door
Related sectors
Sector
Classical computing architectures that use photons for arithmetic, logic, optimization, neural-network acceleration, or in-path data processing. Also called optical computing. Includes integrated photonic processors, optical neural networks, optoelectronic accelerators, and all-optical computing; excludes pure optical communications, generic photonic components, sensing, and photonic quantum computing unless they perform classical computation.
Sector
Additive manufacturing technology for producing physical objects
Sector
Novel materials with superior properties for manufacturing
Sector
Distributed computing processing data at network edges
Sector
Nuclear fusion technology for clean, abundant energy generation
Is this page right?How the research works