SPIE Responds to NSF Request for Information on TIP Roadmap

SPIE submitted the following public comment to the Request for Information (RFI) on Developing a Roadmap for the Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships at the National Science Foundation.?

On behalf of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, and our over 23,000 individual members and over 600 corporate members, we are honored to have the opportunity to respond to the Request for Information (RFI) on Developing a Roadmap for the Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) .

The mission of the TIP Directorate is long overdue. It is well known in scientific circles that, other than the exception of a few companies, industry is not likely to invest in high-risk research where the return on investment is both uncertain and could be decades in the future. Focusing federal funds on research with the highest probability of arming U.S. companies with the needed knowledge base to innovate in areas of technology critical to its economic and national security is something countries across the globe have been taking advantage of for a while to great success.

As a representative of the optics and photonics community with many U.S. members, it is our hope that this kind of translational research will result in great success. In particular, we appreciate that NSF will be able to partner with industry as team leads to help drive research in the direction needed to move out of the lab and into products and services. The key technology focus areas listed as priorities for the TIP Directorate all would benefit from and, in many cases, are enabled by optics and photonics, with many areas ripe for investment.

Key Technology Focus Area 1 includes artificial intelligence, machine learning, and autonomy. Advances in these areas are intimately related to advances in photonic integrated circuits (PICs), optical fiber technologies, and photonic components including optical resonators, optical delay lines, interferometers, and optical frequency combs. Such technology enables the complex networking and speed required to advance this key technology area.

High-performance computing (HPC, Key Technology Focus Area 2) progress is closely tied to advances in silicon photonics—chip-level photonics which enables high speeds, improved bandwidths, and lower power consumption than traditional methods. If the definition of HPC includes quantum computing, photonics technologies in the forms of lasers, precision optics, optical modulators, repeaters and amplifiers, and frequency combs all need to be robust and available off-the-shelf to move this technology to the next phase of commercial readiness.

These same photonics components play an important role throughout quantum information sciences (Key Technology Focus Area 3) as do additional items such as single-photon and entangled-photon sources. Quantum information sciences continue to be a prime area of funding both within the United States and around the globe. Well-defined metrics and roadmaps for the key components as well as the integration of these components to sub-system and then to system-level capability is key not only to commercializing the technology but, in doing so, maintaining U.S. leadership in this area.

Advances in photonic components including cameras, detectors, and sensors will be needed to continue progress in Key Technology Focus Area 4—robotics, automation, and advanced manufacturing—with improvements in sensitivity, spatial and spectral resolution, signal-to-noise ratio, and form factor (miniaturization) all needed. Improvements in lasers and materials will be needed to enable further progress in advanced manufacturing techniques such as additive manufacturing. Ongoing improvements in light sources, photosensitive materials, optical metrology equipment, and optical encoders will be needed to advance semiconductor processing steps including the photolithography processes used currently to manufacture the majority of semiconductor chips.

Natural and anthropogenic disaster prevention and mitigation (Key Technology Focus Area 5) relies heavily on a range of imaging modalities to monitor and observe changes on Earth and in the atmosphere. Much of this data comes from satellites and the modalities are largely photonics based including hyperspectral imaging, radar, microwaves, and synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Each modality needs to improve upon its spectral and spatial resolution, and further miniaturization is needed to reduce size and weight and, therefore, power requirements. Advanced networking capabilities and improved laser communication schemes will heighten the speed of change detection, and hence early warning of impending issues, to allow more rapid responses and mitigation or recovery efforts.

Key Technology Focus Area 6, advanced communications technology and immersive technology, have roadmaps that are intimately coupled with advances in optics and photonics components. Advanced communications depend upon advances in optical fiber technology and optical components including transceivers, receivers, multiplexers, repeaters, waveguides, and sensors to name a few. Improvements in displays and their subcomponents such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs) or organic LEDs (OLEDs) are important for both advanced communications and immersive technologies. Augmented, virtual, and mixed reality (AR/VR/MR) technologies are the basis of immersive technologies.

In turn, these areas require advances in light sources including improved brightness and spatial resolution as well as optical components such as waveguides and optical sensors for eye tracking to further miniaturize headsets and further reduce motion sickness effects. AR/VR/MR technology, in turn, is not only driving roadmaps in the gaming and entertainment industries but is also being utilized increasingly in security and defense training and is finding novel use in such areas as the surgical theater.

Roadmaps for optics and photonics imaging modalities and components also play a large role in biotechnology and medical technology (Key Technology Focus Area 7). Ongoing improvements in laser technologies and other imaging sources drive progress in diagnostics and therapeutics. Advances are needed in source brightness, spectral and spatial resolution, and beam positioning technologies.

Advances in such metrics as resolution and signal-to-noise limits are required to improve sensors and detectors for this Key Technology Focus Area. Miniaturization of all technologies in this field helps drive point-of-care (POC) use. Material advances, such as those needed in biomarkers, will be needed to improve detection sensitivity. Optogenetics and neurophotonics are entire fields dedicated to understanding genetics, cell functionality, and the brain; both of these fields depend intimately on the advances in optics and photonics technologies mentioned herein.

Data storage, data management, distributed ledger technologies, and cybersecurity, including biometrics (Key Technology Focus Area 8), are driven by improvements in optics and photonics in many cases. Advances in optical data storage drive enhanced data storage capability at reduced power and higher storage density than what is found in traditional methods. To continue to advance this field, improvements in laser technology and supporting technologies such as beam steering and positioning instrumentation are needed.

Data centers rely heavily on photonics advances. Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) mentioned earlier enable on-chip data storage at lower power. Co-packaged optics (PICs packaged with electronics) enable miniaturization and a reduction in power consumption as do the use of optical data links, switches, modulators, and multiplexers. Biometrics benefit from improvements in light sources and optical scanners and imaging technologies. Quantum encryption techniques play a role in cybersecurity and, as discussed above, quantum information technologies and their roadmaps call heavily upon roadmaps of and progress in photonics components.

The recent developments at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) have placed advanced energy technologies in the news. Although it is unlikely that nuclear fusion technology will translate from research to the commercial marketplace in the near future, a number of corporate ventures are exploring this technology and would benefit from well-defined roadmaps around laser and peripheral technologies in this area.

Near-term, Key Technology Focus Area 9—advanced energy and industrial efficiency technologies—would benefit from well-defined roadmaps for key metrics for photovoltaics (PVs), whether they be silicon-based, organic, or hybrid in nature. New material families such as perovskites continue to be explored and would benefit from clearly delineated targets in terms of performance and timelines. PVs benefit from enhancements in ancillary equipment such as non-concentrating optics and heliostats both of which need ongoing improvements in technology and materials to drive efficiency increases.

The production of synthetic fuels such as solar hydrogen is an exciting and rapidly advancing field that will require robust roadmaps to guide the scaling of the technology moving forward if there is any chance for commercial viability in the near term. For instance, improvements in photo-absorbers and concentrator optics can improve efficiency and production rates but must be scalable and economically feasible.

Advanced materials, Key Technology Focus Area 10, crosscut the other Key Technology Focus Areas. Materials discovery and improvements in existing materials will drive improvements in other areas. It is impossible to decouple materials or material properties from technology. Many of the optics and photonics elements listed above would benefit either from improvements in existing materials or new materials.

In addition, then, to what is implied above some other materials merit mention. Metamaterials possess unique optical and photonics properties resulting in performance enhancement, new applications, and miniaturization of technology. Scaling metamaterials for commercial use and defining the performance parameters for different applications is of high importance; this is an area where roadmaps can provide clarity and guidance.

Another family of materials gaining increased, renewed interest is compound semiconductors which provide some advantages in thermal performance over traditional silicon-based devices making them useful in cases where high powers are needed or harsh environments are present. Although not driven by their optics and photonics properties, these materials have value in a number of applications and their manufacturing processes draw heavily on optics and photonics technologies. Performance targets, scaling targets, and goals toward hybrid integration of these material families with each other and with silicon would be beneficial.

Two-dimensional (2D) materials also have unique optical properties which make them useful in a number of areas including many of the Key Technology Focus Areas. Being 2D in nature, they come with an inherent opportunity to miniaturize technologies if the appropriate properties and manufacturing scales can be achieved. Having roadmaps for the salient properties of these materials as they relate to the application of interest for each Key Technology Focus Area would prove helpful in guiding the translation process.

As one can imagine, given that optics and photonics technologies figure in all ten Key Technology Focus Areas, these technologies are critically aligned to the NSF’s Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) Directorate roadmap development activities. The inclusion of optics and photonics technologies in such roadmaps will not only help advance the Key Technology Focus Areas but will also help the TIP Directorate drive toward achieving the five goals stated in the Societal, National, and Geostrategic Challenges.

The partnerships being created through this new directorate will be key to its success. SPIE stands ready to encourage the active participation of our membership in support of the TIP mission.?