One of the defining features of modern life is consumer electronics. Smart devices with computational power that would have been staggering a few decades ago are now so commonplace that they’re completely taken for granted, and many people are never without their smartphone.
A big reason for this is just how efficiently the components of these devices can be manufactured, and the best example is the transistor, the component that underpins all modern electronic devices. The MOSFET (the most widely-used type of transistor) was invented by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1960, and since then it’s become so ubiquitous that it’s been claimed to be the most-manufactured item in human history. It’s now routine, for example, for every smartphone to contain over ten billion transistors crammed into its casing; indeed, Moore’s law, the famous observation that the number of transistors per integrated circuit roughly doubles every two years, has more or less held since the mid-1970s.
This enormous and well-established development and manufacturing infrastructure for electronic devices makes it difficult for alternative or complementary technologies like photonics to get off the ground. Photonics generally refers to the use of light (photons) in devices and applications that are similar to electronics – for example, a photonic integrated circuit or PIC is a microchip where instead of exchanging and processing electricity, the components on the chip exchange light. This light might be generated by tiny on-chip lasers, guided down miniaturised optical waveguides instead of metal tracks, and transmitted between PICs in optical fibres similar to those used for telecommunications.
Photonics has a lot of promise. Light isn’t susceptible to pervasive interference in the same way electrical signals are, meaning that optical devices can be packed in next to each other on a chip without disrupting each other’s function. On top of that, electromagnetic induction places a limit on how quickly the value of an electrical signal can be switched, as when a voltage changes rapidly it induces currents that generate heat, heating up the device and wasting energy. Light doesn’t have this property, and can switch as fast as you like with no induction and no waste. These advantages may one day allow photonic devices to be even smaller and faster than electronic ones, though that technology is yet to be invented.
And that’s where an issue comes in – the process of developing and prototyping new photonic devices, and eventually manufacturing them, is in its infancy compared to consumer electronics. Anyone hoping to invent and commercialise new photonic devices is likely to encounter significant delays and expenses just finding out whether their idea is feasible and has promise. That’s a barrier to photonics undergoing the kind of rapid innovation and scaling up that has occurred for electronics over the past few decades.
Against that backdrop, it’s easy to see why Wave Photonics, a startup spun out from the University of Cambridge, has just concluded a very successful £4.5m investment round. The company provides services to developers (or prospective developers) of new photonic devices, mainly focussing on computational tools and training that allow simulation and optimisation of circuit components and designs. Along with a number of partners they’ve also launched a service called QPICPAC that aims to provide standardisation in the packaging of PICs to avoid new innovators having to reinvent the wheel – they describe it as a “template-driven approach”. Their partners can then produce a test run of the designed chips to allow customers to realise a physical prototype faster and with a minimum of unnecessary development work or inefficiency.
Photonics is an area extremely ripe for increased attention and innovation, and lowering the barriers to entry for new ideas is a very worthwhile endeavour. We’re excited to see what new inventions might emerge from Wave Photonics’ platform in the future.
