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Source: From OFweek Optical Communication Network

On the evening of September 14, the international top academic journal Nature published an article announcing that the scientific research team led by Zhang Yong, Xiao Min and Zhu Shining of Nanjing University had invented a new type of "nonreciprocal femtosecond laser polarized ferroelectric domain" technology, focusing the femtosecond pulse laser on the inside of the crystal of the material "lithium niobate". By controlling the direction of laser movement, an effective electric field was formed inside the crystal to achieve direct writing and erasure of three-dimensional structures.

This technology has broken through the optical diffraction limit of traditional femtosecond laser, reducing the size of light engraved lithium niobate three-dimensional structure from the traditional 1 micron level to the nanometer level for the first time, reaching 30 nanometers, greatly improving the processing accuracy, and also marking a major breakthrough for Chinese scientists in the next generation of optoelectronic chip manufacturing.

Relevant reports emphasize that this major invention may open up a new track for the manufacture of optoelectronic chips in the future, which is expected to be used for the preparation of key optoelectronic device chips such as optoelectronic modulators, acoustic filters, nonvolatile ferroelectric memories, and has broad application prospects in 5G/6G communications, optical computing, artificial intelligence and other fields.

With the advent of the photonic era, the domestic optical chip market continues to expand

Since entering the 21st century, global scientific and technological innovation has entered an unprecedented period of intensive activity. A new round of scientific and technological and industrial reform is reshaping a new economic form and competition pattern. Against this background, the intelligent revolution represented by "photonic integration+artificial intelligence+life science" has become the fourth industrial revolution in the world.

From the market perspective, with the advent of the era of consumer photons, integrated circuits will move towards the era of integrated optical paths, which will bring a trillion dollar market. Optoelectronic chips have become the core foundation of the era of "consumer photons". Apple, Huawei, Intel, Cisco, IBM and other international top companies have deployed optoelectronic chips. In China, a number of chip enterprises such as Shaanxi Yuanjie Semiconductor and Qixin Optoelectronics have emerged, focusing on the R&D and manufacturing of photonic materials and photonic chips to meet the needs of the new generation of high-speed optical communication, optical computing and optical sensing, and seize the commanding heights of emerging strategic industries.

In terms of market size, the domestic optical chip market size has climbed from 800 million dollars to 2.08 billion dollars in the past eight years, with a compound annual growth rate of about 17.3%. At the same time, according to the planning of China's 5G, data center, "Western Digital and Eastern Digital", and "dual gigabit" networks, it is estimated that the domestic optical chip market is expected to further expand to 2.4 billion dollars in 2022.

Seizing the opportunity, the construction of domestic photonic chip industry is in full swing

In order to seize the opportunity of the "fourth industrial revolution", China has begun to actively carry out a series of optical chip industry construction actions in recent years.

In 2021, Beijing released the Beijing Municipal Measures on Promoting Investment in High Precision Industries and Promoting the High end Intelligent Green Development of Manufacturing Industry, which clearly proposed to preempt the layout of future frontier industries in optoelectronics, cutting-edge new materials, quantum information and other fields.

As a strong city in the optical information industry, Xi'an has formed three industrial chains of photons, semiconductors and integrated circuits, and intelligent terminals, and a large number of leading enterprises have emerged.

With the continuous improvement of the industrial chain, the optoelectronic industry scale of Xi'an Hi tech Zone is also accelerating. The data shows that in 2021, the scale of optoelectronic industry in Xi'an High tech Zone will reach 334.463 billion yuan, an increase of 17.13% year on year, ranking first in the central and western regions.

In March this year, Xi'an continued to invest in the optoelectronic industry. Xi'an Innovation Investment Fund completed its registration, and the 10 billion master fund was officially established and entered the operation stage. The first phase of the fund, with a scale of 10 billion yuan, will focus on the business layout of photoelectric chips, electronic information, artificial intelligence and other directions.

In Dawan District, Shenzhen issued the Opinions on the Development and Expansion of Strategic Emerging Industrial Clusters and the Cultivation and Development of Future Industries on June 6 this year, focusing on the development of 20 strategic emerging industrial clusters such as "semiconductor and integrated circuit".

One month after the release of the Opinions, the Institute of Integrated Circuits and Optoelectronic Chips of Shenzhen University of Technology was officially unveiled, and Professor Ning Cunzheng, one of the world's leading players in the field of nano lasers and semiconductor devices and the inventor of white light lasers, served as the first president.

Relevant people of the college said that the establishment of the college will actively respond to the national integrated circuit and chip industry development strategy, serve the urgent needs of national and regional economic and social development, and be committed to creating an innovation platform for industrial coordination and international cooperation in the field of integrated circuit and optoelectronic chip.