The markets for photonic integrated circuits in 2030

What will be the leading markets for photonic integrated circuits (PICs) by the decade's end? And what are the challenges facing the PIC industry?

SiLC Technologies' Lidar PIC. Source: SiLC Technologies.

A panel session at the recent PIC Summit Europe event held in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, looked at what would be the markets for photonic integrated circuits by 2030.

The market for PICs is dominated by datacom and telecom. However, emerging applications include medical and wearable devices, optical computing, autonomous vehicles, and sensing applications for the oil, gas, water, and agriculture industries.

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SiDx's use of silicon photonics for blood testing

Part 4: Biosensor start-up, SiDx

A blood sample reveals much about a person’s health. But analysing the sample is complicated given its many constituents.

Identifying a user’s blood type is also non-trivial.

If a patient arriving at hospital needs a blood transfusion, the universal donor blood type, O negative, is administered. That’s because it takes too long - 45 minutes typically - to identify the patient’s blood type. This also explains the huge demand for O negative blood.

A laser lights the waveguide causing the ring to resonate. The blood sample then flows over the ring causing constituents to bind to the receptors. A rinse stage then removes specific bound components leaving the target constituent that has a signature wavelength shift. Source: SiDx.

Identifying blood type promptly is what start-up SiDx set out to address with a platform based on a silicon photonics sensor. The resulting platform does more than just blood-type identification.

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imec’s research work to advance biosensors

Part 3: Biosensor developments

• Pol Van Dorpe discusses the institute’s use of photonics and silicon to develop new designs for medical diagnostics.
• imec has designed a breathalyser that detects the coronavirus with the accuracy of a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, a claimed world first.

Pol Van Dorpe, an imec Fellow

Optics and photonics are advancing medical diagnostics in two notable ways.

The technologies are helping to shrink diagnostic systems to create new types of medical devices.

"Going from big lab equipment to something much smaller is a clear trend," says Pol Van Dorpe, a Fellow at imec, the Belgium R&D nanoelectronics and nanotechnology institute.

Photonics and silicon also benefit central labs by creating more powerful test instruments. More functionality and detectors can be integrated in a given area enabling multiple tests in parallel, a technique dubbed multiplexing.

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The growing role of biosensors

Part 2: Professor Laura Lechuga, biosensor pioneer 

Professor Lechuga, a leading biosensor researcher, explains the challenges involved in developing medical biosensors and why, due to covid, the technology's time has come.  

Professor LechugaLaura Lechuga is a multideciplinarian. She read chemistry at university, did a doctorate in physics while her postdoctoral research was in electrical engineering. She has even worked in a cleanroom, making chips.

Group leader at the NanoBiosensors and Bioanalytical Applications Group at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), Lechuga thus has an ideal background for biosensor research.

Biosensors are used for health, environmental, food control, veterinary and agriculture applications. They are used to test for chemical substances and comprise a biological element and an optical sensor.

Her initial focus was environmental biosensors but she quickly switched to medical devices, partly because of the great interest healthcare generates.

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Timepieces that tell you how you are

Apple is Rockley Photonics’ largest customer. So says Rockley in a document filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as it prepares to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

The Form S-4 document provides details of Rockley’s silicon photonics platform for consumer ‘wearables’ and medical devices, part of the emerging health and wellness market.

Andrew Rickman, Rockley Photonics’s CEO, discusses what the company has been working on and how a wearable device can determine a user’s health.

The first of several articles on silicon photonics-based biosensors for medical and other applications.

Andrew Rickman

Part 1: Consumer Wearables

Ever wondered what the shining green light is doing on the underside of your smartwatch?

The green LED probes the skin to measure various health parameters - biomarkers - of the wearer. Just what light can reveal about a user’s health is a topic that has preoccupied Rockley Photonics for several years.

Rockley is not solely interested in using the visible spectrum to probe the skin but also light at higher wavelengths. Using the infrared portion of the spectrum promises to reveal more about the watch wearer's health.

Rockley can also shed light on its own healthcare activities following the announcement of its merger with SC Health that will enable Rockley to be listed on the NYSE, valued at $1.2 billion.

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