Author: Ou Xue
Editor: Yuan Silai
With the fast improvement of slicing – edge applied sciences equivalent to synthetic intelligence, autonomous driving, and quantum communication, photon expertise, because the underlying help, is changing into a strategic excessive – floor in international scientific and technological competitors. Against this backdrop, Shaanxi launched the “Chasing Light Plan” in 2021.
On November 4th, on the Photonics Industry Summit of the 2025 Hard Technology Innovation Conference held in Xi’an, the Shaanxi Optoelectronics Pre – analysis Institute introduced that the primary 8 – inch superior silicon photonics built-in expertise innovation platform in Northwest China (hereinafter known as the “8 – inch silicon photonics platform”) was formally put into operation. This breakthrough not solely fills the hole within the regional industrial chain but in addition turns into the core fulcrum for Shaanxi to construct a 100 – billion – stage photonics trade cluster.
“Most of the global silicon photonics pilot resources are concentrated in the hands of European and American enterprises. Domestic enterprises have to pay high fees for tape – outs on foreign platforms and face problems such as long cycles and limited production capacity,” identified Yang Junhong, the final supervisor of the Shaanxi Optoelectronics Pre – analysis Institute on the convention web site. She mentioned that the large funding in tools required for self – constructing manufacturing traces discourages small and medium – sized enterprises and analysis groups.
(Yang Junhong, the final supervisor of the Shaanxi Optoelectronics Pre – analysis Institute, introduces the progress of the “Chasing Light Plan” and the silicon photonics pilot platform)
36Kr discovered that the 8 – inch silicon photonics platform launched by the Optoelectronics Pre – analysis Institute this time has a complete funding of 750 million yuan. It has launched the “130nm silicon photonics chip process package” from IMEC in Belgium and is supplied with greater than 60 key tools equivalent to lithography and etching machines. Based on the 130nm energetic built-in silicon photonics foremost course of, the platform is growing superior processes above 90nm to construct an independently controllable course of system.
“This is the first pilot platform in the silicon photonics field in Northwest China. Coupled with the 6 – inch compound platform we built before, we have become one of the few innovation carriers in China with full – chain pilot capabilities,” Yang Junhong launched. The platform adopts the “1 + N” versatile engineering mannequin. 80% of the assets of the principle course of platform are open to small and medium – sized enterprises for pilot tape – out companies, and 20% are used to help frontier analysis and improvement, realizing environment friendly useful resource allocation and industrial collaboration.
Fu Peng, the deputy normal supervisor of the Shaanxi Optoelectronics Pre – analysis Institute, identified in an interview with 36Kr that the explosion of synthetic intelligence has put ahead increased necessities for computing energy and information transmission.
“In the next five years, silicon photonics will be mainly used for the ‘optical replacement of copper’ inside data centers – optical communication will replace electrical signals at shorter and shorter distances, even down to the centimeter level. Even the chips on the circuit boards and the interface chips will be interconnected through optical connections for data transmission,” Fu Peng defined. “This requires a large number of optical chips to achieve the conversion from electricity to light and back to electricity.”
After 5 years, he predicts that optical computing chips will regularly emerge. “Currently, some enterprises are trying to use optical computing chips to solve specific problems. Although they cannot completely replace GPUs at present, optical computing has high speed and extremely low energy consumption, and its proportion in data centers will gradually increase in the future.”
In addition to synthetic intelligence and information facilities, Fu Peng identified that photon sensing is one other quickly rising market. “Lidar is not only widely used in autonomous vehicles but also has strong demand in consumer electronics and industrial automation scenarios such as sweeping robots and embodied robots. In the future, the number of lidars installed on automation equipment will continue to increase.”
Since the launch of Shaanxi’s “Chasing Light Plan” in 2021, it has promoted the leap – ahead improvement of the province’s photonics trade. Yang Junhong revealed on the convention that as of now, the variety of photonics enterprises in Shaanxi has elevated to 379, and the economic scale has jumped from 15 billion yuan to 36.5 billion yuan, initially setting up a whole industrial chain of “materials – chips – devices – systems”.
While constructing the platform, Shaanxi has additionally taken a key step in fundamental photonics analysis and mechanism innovation. At this photonics summit, Fu Yuxi, the deputy director of the Xi’an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, publicly unveiled the development blueprint of the “Photonics Technology Laboratory” for the primary time.
It is reported that the laboratory handed the professional evaluate in August this 12 months and entered the cultivation and development interval. With the Xi’an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences because the director – unit, counting on the Shaanxi Optoelectronics Pre – analysis Institute, it can construct a complete laboratory integrating “large – scale scientific facilities + common technology platforms + science and technology finance + innovation consortium”. The complete funding exceeds 1 billion yuan, with 17 director – models, and the cultivation interval is 1 – 2 years.
Fu Yuxi revealed that the brief – time period objectives of the laboratory embrace introducing 30 worldwide prime – notch scientists and gathering greater than 100 researchers; overcoming greater than 30 “bottleneck” key core applied sciences within the photonics discipline inside two years; constructing 3 pilot manufacturing traces and a couple of skilled incubation carriers; and boosting the output worth of Shaanxi’s photonics trade to exceed 50 billion yuan in 2027.