Confers an insuperable advantage
From theoretical conception to incubation to pilot line, Beijing backs future industries driven by cutting-edge technologies IF they possess strategic, leading, disruptive, even indeterminate, characteristics. Their last choices – batteries, EVs, solar panels – succeeded because they correctly anticipated future needs. But creating such cutting-edge technologies at scale requires mobilizing entire industrial ecosystems and building out complete industry chains, with cluster companies as links to ensure capabilities in key materials and components and to capture the value added by each link. Mary Hui.
At least ten countries must cooperate to manufacture one advanced IC – from design to fabrication, to assembly, packaging and components to supplies – except China. Only China has a complete domestic supply chain – from IP to shipped product – and keeps every job and every penny of every link that adds value to manufacturing in:
satellites of every type
nuclear fission power plants (34 under construction).
nuclear fusion power plants (pilot under construction).
quantum computers.
PV panels.
wind generators.
5 nm ICs.
photonic integrated circuits, PICs.
The Photonic Supply Chain
We need ubiquitous connectivity, high, high bandwidth across the entire computer system with minimal energy consumption. But electronically moving large volumes of data and high bandwidth densities over longer distances is difficult and consumes a lot of energy. Whereas in the optical domain we can send multiple signals in the same channel, achieving bandwidth densities of terabytes per millimeter. Karen Bergman, Professor of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University.
Silicon photonics transmits data via optical instead of electrical signals. In an electronic integrated circuit, IC, electron flux passes through resistors, inductors, transistors and capacitors. In a photonic integrated circuit, PIC, photons of light pass through waveguides, lasers, polarizers and phase shifters a thousand times faster than electrons move through copper, so photonic chips run much faster, much cooler, on much less power. That’s why Beijing began investing heavily in photonics in 2003. Since then, Chia’s global photonics market share has risen from 10% to 32%, while the EU and USA stagnated 15% each. It all started in Photonic Valley.
Photonic Valley
Photonic chips require no high-end lithography and can be produced with Chinese IP on mature, indigenous technology and equipment. China already makes all the components for photonic chips and its specialty foundries produce photonic chips for critical applications. Moreover, China is itself the world’s largest optical communication market, growing from $800 million in 2017 to $3 billion today.
In 2001, Wuhan founded a cluster of pioneering optics startups, says Rebecca Pool, “Today, five thousand high-tech enterprises and one-hundred thousand ancillary companies cohabit in eight gigantic industrial parks called Optical Valley of China (OVC), and supply most of the world’s fiber optics and optoelectronics. Universities, companies, industrial associations and research institutes are now adding seven more. Wuhan’s photonics cluster will receive €5 billion; Shanghai’s gets €130 million pa for photonics chips to drive quantum technology(!); Suzhou’s gets €1.3 billion to develop an entire photonics supply chain, and things accelerated this year:
Last January, CAS’s mass-producible silicon optical chip wowed everyone with its use of lithium tantalate heterogeneously integrated wafers and high-
performance photonic chips. Nature.
In March, JSHS developed the first 12-inch diameter, optical-grade lithium niobate crystal and started mass producing 6-8” Z-axis and X-axis optical-grade lithium niobate crystals, aiming for 250,000 wafers annually.
In May, Peking University built a topological photonic chip that integrates the first fully programmable optical artificial atomic lattice–including dynamic topological phase transitions, multi-lattice topological insulators, statistical topological robustness and Anderson topological insulators1.
In June, Tsinghua announced Taichi, which groups PICs in clusters and performs all sensing and computing optically, on the same chip: ‘edge computing,’ for rapid decision-making by autonomous devices and cars.
In August, Wuhan’s JFS Labs integrated and lit a laser on a silicon chip.
In September, Shanghai Jiao Tong U. launched a 17,000 sq.m. photonic pilot line producing 10,000 wafers a year. It integrates both research and production of lithium niobate photonic chips, including lithography, thin film deposition, etching, wet processing, cutting, measurement and packaging.
Counting Photonic Blessings
In addition to greatly speeding computation, integrated photonics enables lab-on-a-chip (LOC) technology, putting laboratories into doctors’ hands. Amazec Photonics’ fiber optic sensor with photonic chips allow doctors to measure both cardiac output and circulating blood volume from outside the body. PICs facilitate communication between vehicles and urban infrastructure to improve driver safety, and can detect different quantities, such as pressure, temperature, vibrations, accelerations, and mechanical strain. PhotonFirst PICs measure shape changes in airplanes, EV battery temperature, and infrastructure strain. PICs can measure variables beyond the range of the human eye, allowing the food supply chain to detect disease, ripeness and nutrients in fruit and plants. It can also help food producers to determine soil quality and plant growth, and measure CO2 emissions. MantiSpectra’s analyzer fits into a smartphone and can analyze chemical constituents of products like milk and plastics.
Implications
While IC demand will continue rising, photonics will remove Taiwan as a bone of contention and give China first-mover dominance in another 21st century industry, PICs, for as many years as America has dominated ICs.
Photonic integrated circuits, in other words, will significantly alter the balance of global power.
Notes
Silicon Photonics: Columbia Prof. Karen Bergman on the Why, How and When of a Technology that Could Transform HPC. Inside HPC
“Efficient photonic chip fabrication with 2.5D printing” by L. Zhang et al. (Nature Communications, June 5, 2021)
“Superior photonic chip fabrication using 2D material-coated microring resonators” by M. Li et al. (Light: Science & Applications, May 15, 2021)
“High-throughput photonic chip fabrication using femtosecond laser processing” by Y. Cheng et al. (Applied Physics Letters, April 15, 2021)
A topological Anderson insulator is induced by disorders. Unlike conventional topological insulators, its Fermi energy lies within a so-called mobility gap instead of a real band gap. The robustness of the edge or surface states is protected by the mobility gap. Got it?
