"Perspectives on Optoelectronics" Forum Report

OIDA News - December 2007

 

An Excerpt from OIDA’s "Perspectives on Optoelectronics" Forum Report

 

The "Perspectives on Optoelectronics: Advances, Challenges, and Growth Opportunities" forum in San Jose was extremely well attended. We are pleased to provide you with both the Foreword and the Executive Summary from the report.

Foreward
 
I would like to personally thank the keynote speakers who set the scene for the forum and addressed many topical and challenges issues for the audience and industry in general. Henry Kressel, Managing Director, Warburg Pincus, gave a thoughtful, challenging talk on the future of the technology industry and where the key trends were going. David Morse, Senior VP of R&D at Corning (and OIDA Chairman), reviewed some the key opportunities for photonics in a wide ranging portfolio of applications and markets. I would also like to thank our key sponsor for the event, DARPA MTO.

With over 100 attendees and a scope that covered six major themes in photonics applications, the forum brought together people from many industries to discuss opportunities both within and outside of their normal target businesses. As these types of events are a challenge to organize and attract senior industry representatives to, feedback to OIDA was very positive indeed in these areas.

Executive Summary
 

OIDA membership is greatly concerned that, from a global perspective, the United States is falling behind in the manufacturing, packaging, and assembling of optoelectronics products. Innovating technology may also be imperiled. This report is the result of the first of three forums sponsored by DARPA, “Perspectives on the Optoelectronics Industry: Advances, Challenges and Growth Opportunities.” The second and third forums will encompass manufacturing and innovation, respectively, in 2008.

The forum explored six major sectors in optoelectronics: consumer/personal, computer, communications, transportation, industrial, and defense. This report details the trends, findings, and directions for optoelectronics in each of these market applications. Included in the first chapter of this report is the global optoelectronics summary that was compiled by OIDA in 2007. The forum also explored how optoelectronics is being utilized to enable innovative new products and applications in today’s digital markets from a global perspective.

At the very highest level, the forum concluded that the following global trends are occurring in the digital (and subsequently optoelectronics) world:

1) Our lifestyle will evolve over the next decade and drive optoelectronics technology to new levels of application, use, and effect.

New applications for, and use of, optoelectronics will foster innovation quickly and effectively over the next decade. We are already seeing exciting levels of new human phenomenon appear with the sharing of optoelectronic based products such as video, photos and communicators (such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants). We have even envisioned the communicator platform to evolve to a wireless-based mobile medic with optoelectronics functions, be it a sensor, data management device, or simply a portable approach to monitoring the user’s medical health. These ideas in turn are providing a strong impetus to more fully utilize the communications network to deliver media-rich services such as IPTV and video-on-demand. Private capital will selectively support those opportunities that quickly enter into the industrial marketplace.

Optoelectronics is a diverse industry embracing a rich photonics technology capable of truly remarkable innovations. Fundamental changes have already been effected by fiber optic transport in communications, flat panel in displays, non-intrusive medical diagnostics, light-emitting diodes in signaling, and general illumination. Fashion will eventually become a strong vehicle for optoelectronics over and above LEDs which have been used in children’s shoes. Over the next decade, new fabrics will be made of photonic materials and clothing will integrate signaling and displays. During the next decade, we expect to see many more life-changing applications that will be optoelectronics driven.

Our second global trend from the forum:

2) A major economy such as that of the United States must maintain selected manufacturing to remain competitive in the next decade.

This is especially true in optoelectronics where an off-shoring manufacturing trend has accelerated over the last decade. There are signs that the movement off-shore may well be peaking as the issues of labor are certainly no longer at the top. In addition, we found at the forum that the protection of optoelectronics design centers will be critical for the U.S. to maintain superior defense optoelectronics product performance in the future. Government policies must encourage domestic manufacturing in optoelectronics for the United States to remain competitive.

This leads us to our third global trend:

3) The U.S. will experience continuing consolidation as optoelectronics innovation and marketing become increasingly integrated on a global scale over the next decade.

The third global trend will hold true not only for optoelectronics, but for digital technology in general. The last few decades have driven towards global commerce, a trend which is expected to continue. The concern for the United States will be: the threat of loss of intellectual property and key skilled labor from our advanced technological training at our colleges and schools. While the U.S. might be gaining economically from increased business as companies expand to undertake commerce on a global scale, we see optoelectronics suffering from IP infringement and loss of competitive skills.

The following list encompasses a number of key technological findings from the forum:

 

1. Television is king, and will drive display technologies and photonic innovations to new highs. Over the next decade, we expect to see the rise of LEDs as backlights, laser projection using red, green, blue semiconductor lasers and MEMs scanners, active matrix organic displays both small molecule as well as polymer, and electronic inks.
2. The television will become mobile: communicators will carry movies, shows, and videos for users to use any time, any place. Broadcasting will evolve to network-based distribution.
3. Microdisplays and projection will become more popular as users begin to find novel ways to utilize their life on the move. Heads-up displays integrated with communicators that can project displays are two examples of radical lifestyle changes that will emerge with new optoelectronics technology solutions.
4. Substrate and materials technologies in the display, lighting, and solar fields have evolved from wafers over the last two or three decades to glass panels today. This trend will continue with strong manufacturing competences in Asia. However, we see a growing trend toward flexible, non-rigid substrates over the next decade.
5. Plastic photonics will emerge as a new and exciting industry that has the potential to be manufactured outside of Asia. Plastic photonics includes organic LEDs, photovoltaics and novel displays. One key advantage is flexible substrate (roll-to-roll) manufacturing that employs similar tooling as used in the printing industry. ‘Throw-away’ displays that can be printed will change the way manufacturers and publications advertise and convey information.
6. "Green" photonics will emerge as a new technology area with wide ranging applications that will bridge many industries. Green photonics will not only include solid-state lighting and solar, but will grow to include energy efficiency and heat removal in communications as well as environmental conservatism in optoelectronics-based applications.
7. Wafer-based optics will become more integrated with electronics and optoelectronic devices, thus driving higher and more functional optoelectronic solutions for products.
8. High power lasers and associated modules for industrial and defense applications will follow similar footprint trends as the transceiver/transponders and EDFAs for communications: smaller, denser, and more efficient over the next decade. Power levels are expected to increase over the decade.
9. Transportation will utilize significantly more optoelectronics in consumer markets such as collision sensing, vehicle sensing, image viewing, LIDAR, POF, heads-up displays, solid-state lighting, and fiber optic communications.
10. The communications network will accelerate to accommodate 100 Gbps and beyond. While today the industry is concerned with the upgrade cost from 10 Gbps to 40 Gbps (on the order of 4X), over the next decade the demand for higher capacity networks that incorporate 100 Gbps will drive carriers to implement this technology even with significantly higher cost levels (10X to 30X).
11. The dynamic network will evolve quickly over the next decade with pressure to simplify optoelectronic modules, devices, and substrate materials. Devices will be expected to operate un-cooled, and even on non-crystalline substrates such as glass, sapphire, or flexible organic. Modules will be expected to be hot-pluggable and interconnect cables may evolve toward active cable designs where the optical connectors are not needed.
12. 3D displays may evolve to become important technologies to add value and features to consumer products ranging from televisions to communicator displays, especially those that require no eyewear to view.
13. The digital still camera and CMOS image sensor will grow in popularity so that communicators will be digital still camera (DSC) based as opposed to being wireless RF based in a decade. Consumers want to be able to record life in a mobile environment.