Each year’s Photonics West exhibit has proven to be as resilient against fickle economic and global trends as the industry it showcases. Except for that tiny hiccup from the global pandemic in 2020, the show has expanded its numbers every year and steadily drawn more speakers, exhibitors, and attendees from around the world — even as other industries have trended toward domestic isolation.
And like the photonics industry, Photonics West seems to evolve in several directions at once. Each year, exhibitors showcasing traditional component technologies — lasers, optics, and photodetectors — reliably introduce multiple new innovations. But more recently, a sea change has become apparent on the exhibit floor as these once discrete devices have shrunk down to the point that they can now be integrated onto wafers and packaged into photonic integrated circuits (PICs).
By integrating electronic and photonic circuits onto the same chip, PICs offer revolutionary new solutions for addressing the exploding demand for datacenter bandwidth in the age of artificial intelligence — even as they significantly reduce the need for server power. And as we learned during several of the Manufacturing Matters podcast episodes recorded onsite at this year's Photonics West, the future of PICs is ultimately a manufacturing story.
Silicon, the basis for virtually all logic and memory chips, does not lase. So, integrating photonic functions onto a chip requires the use of other materials and architectures that, while not expressly exotic, do not always play nicely with decades-old CMOS manufacturing processes. Photonic chips also demand unique new packaging schemes than what traditional ICs have relied on for decades.
Keep an eye on the Manufacturing Matters website for our conversations with PhotonDelta and Physik Instrumente about this trend and the unique challenges involved in fabricating PICs. And be sure to also catch our chats with AccuCoat on optical coating trends, and with Optica on, well, virtually every trend in photonics.
Stay tuned. There's a twist coming.
Though remarkable, the emergence of PICs doesn't tell the whole story of Photonics West — not by half.
The ability to generate, manipulate, and detect light has become instrumental to the success of some very disparate fields. SPIE, which hosts Photonics West, saw fit to recently add co-located exhibits to give two standouts their due: Quantum West highlights how photonics is driving developments in quantum computers, clocks, and sensors, while the AR|VR|MR exhibit showcases photonic solutions for enabling lighter, more compact, and more immersive augmented, virtual, and mixed reality gear.
In that same vein, SPIE announced plans this year to introduce Vision Tech Expo in 2026, another exhibit co-located with Photonics West that will be dedicated entirely to advances in machine vision technology.
What's old is new again. Decades ago, machine vision technology often shared space in the same trade publications and industry events as other photonic systems, like industrial lasers, spectroscopy, and lidar. And why not? Like these systems, machine vision requires a healthy amount of photonic expertise to optimize the interplay of optical lenses, lighting systems, and camera sensors and controls.
TECH B2B Marketing would like to thank SPIE for allowing us to assist with its Vision Tech Expo exhibit conference program and exhibit, and for generously finding space for the Manufacturing Matters podcast to record onsite amid an increasingly busy Photonics West show.
We hope to see you all in San Francisco next year, either at Vision Tech Expo, Photonics West, or both. Until then, contact us to start planning for your next tradeshow or event, or discuss your optics marketing needs.
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The next time you attend an event, TECH B2B Marketing can help you get the most out of your trade show marketing program with targeted pre-show marketing, post-event publicity placement, and everything in between. Contact us today to plan for your next trade show.
