Just two months after being selected to create a $610 million national manufacturing institute, a coalition of photonics researchers is aiming for a Jan. 2 launch date.
The American Institute for Manufacturing Integrated Photonics — AIM Photonics for short — already has an 11-member management team in place, and that group is moving rapidly to bring industrial partners into the fold and chart a course for the organization.
Integrated photonics devices, particularly those based on silicon, are expected to be crucial to communications and other technologies in the very near future. Until now, photonic integrated circuits (PICs) have been developed by several groups working separately, meaning there is no standard for assembly or packaging.