The 2024 SPIE Photonex Preview

The British city of Manchester is the venue for this year’s SPIE Photonex and the show sees a returning number of exhibitors and a packed academic programme. Certainly the biggest photonics show in the UK, Photonex – this year on Wednesday, October 30, and Thursday, October 31 – occupies a unique niche, drawing together a number of panel sessions where speakers can present and debate the critical topics of the day.

“With a new UK Government, new Industry strategy and UK spending review in development the industry sessions and panel discussions at Photonex provide an ideal opportunity to network with colleagues to understand the latest developments and trends in the Photonics and how the UK industry can best position itself to fit with and leverage the latest policy developments," said Dr John Lincoln Chief Executive Photonics Leadership Group, Europe Strategy Director SPIE and a Photonics100 honouree. "With the latest government strategies likely to be an ongoing work in progress in October, there is no better time confer with colleagues and build business friendships for the future."

Planned talks and panel discussions for 2024 include:

• Innovate UK and opportunities for photonics
• DBT support for photonics
• Semiconductors and quantum technologies
• An update on UK government spending priorities
• Modern marketing techniques to reach photonics customers
• New photonics developments for applications in bio and life sciences

As you’d expect from SPIE, there are a number of technical topics already announced, with 2023 Photonics100 honouree Callum Littlejohns, from the University of Southampton, and Marc Sorel, from the University of Glasgow, presenting a session on ‘Emerging Applications in Silicon Photonics’. Speakers include Wolfgang Henri, co-CTO of Polariton Technologies; David Thomson, also from the University of Southampton, and Imon Kundu from Optalysis.

Kicking off the event on Wednesday morning, Thomson will report on recent results on high-performance silicon optical modulators, including world leading integrated devices in terms of speed and power consumption.

Next up, Photonex offers a session on heterogeneous integration, with Huiyun Liu, from the University College London, who says Si is one of the most important semiconductor materials. Although it has been a mainstay for modern electronics, it is not widely used for light-emitting sources because bulk Si is an inefficient emitter.Yet, direct epitaxial growth of III-V compound nanostructures on Si substrates is one of the most promising candidates for realising photonic devices on a silicon platform. High performance III-V quantum dot (QD) lasers grown on Si and Ge substrates have been developed since 2011. In this presentation, Liu will outline the development milestones of InAs/GaAs QD lasers monolithically grown on a Si platform, and the potential trend in the next few years.

Chris Porterhouse, CTO of Salience Labs, will explain how lossless and high-bandwidth optical circuit switches can enable a new generation of efficient and highly scalable AI data centres.

Thursday will see further debate about silicon photonics, with a session chaired by Sorel. Keynotes will come from Avi Feshali, of US-based Anello Photonics, a startup developing next-generation navigation technologies. The firm has partnered with a high-volume fab to build state-of-the art silicon nitride process technology to enable its products. In this presentation, Feshali will give an overview of optical gyro technology and discuss various design choices for optical gyroscope architectures and their impact on performance, and adjacent technologies that are enabled through Anello’s silicon nitride process technology.

Frederick van Dijk, of III-V Lab, will present the developments carried out at III-V Lab in collaboration with CEA-Leti on the hybrid integration of III-V chips with ultra-low-loss silicon nitride circuits for optical detection and RF systems. Different types of hybrid circuits will be presented: a narrow linewidth laser based on the combination of an InP R-SOA and a long Bragg grating on SiN; a Kerr frequency comb based on a high-power InP DFB laser butt-coupled to a high-Q SiN micro-ring; a long cavity mode-locked laser based on an R-SOA and a SiN circuit with a delay line and a Bragg grating. He will also present recent progress in hybrid integration using flip-chip assembly of the III-V chip on SiN circuits.

PIC manufacturing is also a focus for Thursday, with Graham Reed introducing new details about the Cornerstone Photonics Innovation Centre (C-PIC), an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council ‘Innovation & Knowledge Centre’ that strives to take silicon photonics research to everyday life. Hosted by the Universities of Southampton and Glasgow, along with the UK’s Science & Technologies Facilities Council, C-PIC will build on the Cornerstone open-source foundry service to provide a wide range of support for researchers and entrepreneurs, including advanced design training, support for commercialisation and test services.

Integrated photonics is one of the final sessions at Photonex, with Katherine Bryant, of Finland’s VTT demonstrating zero birefringence in 3 µm-thick SOI for datacomm applications. Polarisation-independent PIC operation is critical for a range of applications, such as quantum networks and in data centres that utilise polarisation division multiplexing.

Measurements in 3 µm-thick SOI for both effective and group index birefringence and their dispersion at 1550 nm will be presented. Strip waveguide dimensions to achieve a value of zero for each of those four parameters will be shown, thus the dependence on strip waveguide width of zero effective index birefringence wavelength is elucidated.

The Quantum for Photonics sessions, organised by the University of Manchester, include:

• Application drivers
• Components
• Packaging and integration
• Scale-up

With more currently to be scheduled, full details of all dates and timings can be found at www.spie.org/conferences-and-exhibitions/photonex.

One highlight already in many people’s diaries is the organised tour to the Photon Science Institute at the University of Manchester. The Photon Science Institute (PSI) is home to more than 30 academic groups, representing more than five disciplines, centred around the generation, use, and detection of light. Research is aligned with three main themes: photonic materials and devices, biophotonics and bioanalytical spectroscopy, and advanced instrument development.

The institute is home to:

• The National X-Ray Computed Tomography facility (www.nxct.ac.uk)
• The National Service for Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Spectroscopy
• The Nanoscale Advanced Materials program to produce atomic scale devices (www.name-pg.uk)

It is also part of the National Facility for X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (www.subsite.harwellxps.uk), has facilities associated with the Royce Institute for Advanced Materials (www.royce.ac.uk), and facilities from the National Physical Laboratory under its Quantum Materials programme (www.npl.co.uk/universities/npl-univerisity-of-manchester).

Visitors will see these facilities and cutting-edge tools producing the world’s purest silicon and new systems being built to use photonics for fundamental quantum measurements, and tools to probe quantum materials with deep-subwavelength resolution.