Years


Electro Optics


Aldo Kamper, president of Photonics21, reveals the association’s 2030 mission and discusses how Europe is to translate its current competencies into future leadership in a fast-growing global market


The photon will do for the 21st century what the electron did for the twentieth. Europe is already at the forefront of this technological revolution: harnessing the power of light to solve our greatest global challenges. Photonics, the science of creating, manipulating, transmitting and detecting light, is part of our everyday lives. It is literally everywhere, from smartphone displays, fibre-optic broadband transmission, to the laser-assisted medical tools revolutionising healthcare. As light particles, or photons, replace


electrons in many of our most important technologies, innovations already in the pipeline are improving healthcare, growing food, saving energy, reducing pollution, expanding connectivity, transforming


manufacturing and ushering in a new era of mobility. Across the economy, photonics technology will create new jobs and drive growth.


Best in H2020


The Horizon 2020 Photonics Public-Private Partnership (PPP) was created to build on the strengths of the European photonics sector and reinforce its competitiveness. For this purpose, the European Commission joined forces with the photonics industry – represented by Photonics21 – and the research community. The result is a dynamic and effective


partnership with 3,000 members, recognised as the best-in-class contractual PPP in Horizon 2020 by the Commission’s independent


evaluators, and as demonstrated by the PPP’s impact on jobs and growth in Europe. And the effort will continue. It is the mission


of the European photonics community over the next ten years to deliver instant diagnosis of major diseases, quality food from farm to fork, accident and congestion-free road transport, a truly circular economy, a million new jobs, 10 per cent higher productivity, and zero downtime in a terabit economy. Today, Europe’s photonics sector comprises some 5,000 companies producing optical components and systems. Most of them are highly specialised SMEs. The sector is export- oriented and research-intensive. It invests close to 10 per cent of revenues in R&D, about twice the rate of manufacturing as a whole. The sector directly employs over 300,000


people. If we include everyone whose livelihood depends on the use of photonics – from workers using industrial lasers to doctors performing endoscopic surgery – 10 per cent of the workforce and as much as 30 per cent of the entire economy already depend on photonics technology. Photonics is a highly dynamic and fiercely competitive global market that was worth €447 billion in 2015. At a compound annual growth


Amy Eskilson, president and CEO of Inrad Optics, says Industry 4.0 could help bridge the workforce gap


Over the last 25 years it has been fantastic to watch and participate in the ongoing commercialisation of optical technologies. When we aggregate just a few of the broadly deployed technologies enabled by photonics like smart phone cameras, optical communications, medical lasers for everything from cardiac ablation to tattoo removal, fibre lasers and high-power lasers for industrial applications, the cumulative impact is staggering. Most importantly, the industry is still young, and this is what is so exciting about the work we do every day. At Inrad Optics we are focused on high barrier to entry and niche technologies well suited to our unique capabilities, specifically crystalline materials development, certain high precision optical components, complex optomechanical assemblies and optomechatronic subassemblies. We have found that there is an unmet need in the


12 Electro Optics December 2017/January 2018


marketplace for companies willing to work collaboratively with their customers on multi- dimensional optical projects. This need is evident in all market sectors we serve, not just in the scientific R&D community. We see requirements that demand collaboration in the defence, process control and metrology, and the laser systems sectors. Our bent crystals expertise for x-ray monochromator design is a great example of this type of collaboration. Here we work with key customers involved in plasma studies in the scientific R&D community, as well as process control and metrology customers developing commercial solutions in semiconductor wafer inspection and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy systems (XPS). One of the major challenges companies


like Inrad Optics face is the availability of trained optical technicians, especially individuals at a more senior level. While


there is much discussion of implementing European-type apprenticeship programmes in the United States, this effort is still developmental, and resource intensive for SMEs to implement. I believe that public- private partnerships are essential in bridging this workforce chasm. Additionally, the continued evolution of


cyber-physical systems, known as Industry 4.0, holds great promise to help bridge the workforce gap. Recent advances in laser-based ablative digital processing for


“Public-private partnerships are essential in bridging this workforce chasm”


shaping, polishing and assembling optics made of optical glasses and fused silica could offset the US scarcity of qualified technicians. Looking longer term, full integration and


deployment of the digital and optical worlds at the chip level will provide step changes in the areas of quantum computing, integrated photonics and lab-on-a-chip devices. All these advances will hopefully lead to lower cost quality of life improvements that can be accessed by communities the world over, especially in second and third world areas of the globe. EO


@electrooptics | www.electrooptics.com


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