About

The Institute’s goal is to emulate the dramatic successes experienced by the electronics industry over the past 40 years and transition key lessons, processes, and approaches to the Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) industry.

AIM Photonics supports Small and Medium Enterprises, providing practical access and technology on-ramps for U.S. industry, government, and academic communities. We are creating a National PIC manufacturing ecosystem, widely accessible and inherently flexible to meet the challenges of the marketplace with practical, innovative solutions.

What is Integrated Photonics?  Photonics is the science of using and controlling photons, which is the smallest unit of light. Photonics allow for faster transfer of data than traditional electronic circuits.  Integrated photonics allow designers and manufacturers to put thousands of photonic components (such as lasers, detectors, wave guides, modulators, electronic controls, and optical interconnects) together on a single chip, allowing capabilities that were not previously possible.

Photonics is used in a wide range of applications including: AI, quantum computing, light detection and sensing (LiDAR), data communication, sensors, robotics, autonomous vehicles, bio science, and many others.  It currently powers the Internet as we know it today. Integrated photonics provides significant reduction in size, weight, and power, all while dramatically improving performance and reliability.

Integrated photonics is shaping the 21st century as we know it.  As bulky hardware optical components such as; sensors, LiDAR cameras, imaging devices, and smart photonics devices become integrated onto Photonic Integrated Circuits (PIC), the power of the product performance grows exponentially while the power consumption of those products are reduced.  This is a significant benefit over typical semiconductor devices such as microprocessors and memory chips currently powering our products today.  As a result, autonomous vehicles, robotics, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing will take the next giant leap, using integrated photonics.

Integrated Photonics will do for these and many more applications, in the 21st Century, what the semiconductor chips did for PC's, laptops, and smart phones, in the past 40 years.