When we think about optics or photonics, many people intuitively
think about some special applications, like projectors, lasers (shows), or
maybe TV’s. It turns out, Photonics is part of your life in MULTIPLE ways every
day, i.e. in your daily routine. Let me give you an example. Take your cell
phone: starting from the inside out, it uses a processor uses smallest
electronic elements called transistors which were made by optical lithography.
Then of course there is a display, which features a lot of optical parts and
components. Then let’s think about what you do with the phone. Well basically
communicating or excessing data on the net. Those data get in and out of your
handheld via RF signals which light is just a part of. But there is more, the
entire backbone of todays’ internet is based on photonics, or fiber optics;
here 100,000 billion bits of information float down a fiber every second –
sounds a lot? Is a lot! Lastly, your nice an detailed handheld case is likely
to be machined with the use of lasers as well. In short in every aspect of live
optics is becoming more and more important.
Such potential of photonics has been recently recognized in a
report entitled “ Optics & Photonics: Essential Technologies for
Our Nation” released by the National
Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) in Washington DC. In their keynote speeches
Steven Chu, the U.S Secretary of Energy, and Craig Barrett, Founder and CEO of
Intel, addressed the importance and
potential of optics and photonics technologies to drive economic growth, create
jobs, and enabling future innovations to advance society as a whole.
For instance, Chu
highlighted solar cell technologies, which are coming down in price per watt
electricity they produce. A long-time target was to get to 1$/W for solar
cells, which we have already surpassed (current values are 0.86$/W). However,
there is much more potential for solar cell deployment for sustainable energy
sources. For example in the so called E2 conference held in November 11-14 in the
Netherlands organized by the Optical Society of America (OSA), researchers and
industrial leaders come together to discuss new device breakthroughts and system
installation methods that make solar cells truly a mass product. Imagine, the efficiency
of current solar cells to double, and with the trend of rising electricity
costs, a pay-back time of your solar system of less than one year – after which
there is an opportunity to actually make a profit using your system?
In the next posts we will be discussing interesting details about solar cells and optical breakthroughts of the.
