PHOTONICS - A HYPE OR PROMISE?

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Have you ever thought of light bulbs transmitting internet? Sounds a bit crazy right? Well that is the promise of "Photonics" It is being hailed as the technology of the century and the world has already began witnessing some promising developments in this field. It is an area of study which deals with the use of light(a radiant energy) whose most fundamental building blocks are photons. It is regarded as the science and technology of generating,controlling and detecting photons, which are the fundamental particles of light. The word "Photonics" appeared around 1960 when Laser was invented by Theodore Maiman.


Popular opinion of scientists is that the 21st century technological developments would be dependant on "Photonics" just as the 20th century developments depended on Electronics. The scope and applications of Photonics seem endless. From defence and security to entertainment, manufacturing industry to health,telecommunications to consumer electronics, Photonics is everywhere. 

It is similar to Electronics in many ways. While electrons are used to convey information in Electronics, photons are used to convey the same in Photonics. Doing so has many advantages and some of them are as follows:
  • Visible light and Infrared light pass through each other(no mutual interaction) without causing the Interference which is not so in the case of electricity.
  • Light travels much faster than electrons and hence data transmitted photonically can cover large distances with less time.
  • Photonic instruments will consume less power as compared to electronic instruments.

With many Photonics startups coming up around the world in a much bigger pace than ever before, developments in this field are happening relatively quickly and we can expect its impact to be much greater than that of Electronics. Photonics instruments are also much more capable than electronic instruments. For example a single optical fibre has the capability to carry three million phone calls simultaneously. Other applications of Photonics include:
  • Photonic Computer
  • Photonic Networks
  • Photonic Switching
  • Silicon Photonics
We can deal with each of these in separate blog posts. Hope you have enjoyed this article.😊 Please comment your views and share.👍

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