Research Overview

Nanophotonics is the science of controlling light generation, manipulation, transport, and detection on ultra-small length scales. It is an emerging technology that involves the interaction of light with structures smaller than approximately 100nm. The technology has a far-reaching application landscape, and photovoltaics and displays are likely to become the most attractive applications in the near future. This will be mainly due to the rising solar energy contribution in the global energy matrix, the growing space and efficiency issues for existing PV materials, and the increasing importance of high-performance consumer electronics, which will drive the need for nanophotonics material development.

This Frost & Sullivan study focuses on identifying and analyzing emerging nanophotonics materials that will overcome the challenges faced by existing materials; it also discusses methods to increase the commercial adoption of the technology in the displays, quantum computing, photovoltaics, imaging, sensing, telecom, data storage, lasers, and LED lighting industries. Emerging materials under study are divided into 7 segments, that is, metals, ceramics, polymers, nanomaterials, metamaterials, phase-change materials, and stimuli-responsive polymers.

As observed during the research, there are several sub-categories of materials being researched and tested in nanophotonics technology - from metal alloys and ceramics to quantum dots and metamaterials. Metals and ceramics-based nanophotonic materials are already in use in several applications such as medical, telecom, quantum computing, lasers, and data processing. Among the emerging material segments, quantum dots are one of the most attractive materials, and they are seeing substantial commercial adoption, mainly in applications such as displays, photovoltaics, and LED lighting, whereas metamaterials hold potential in medical imaging and sensor applications. Data processing applications such as quantum computing continue to prefer ceramic-based materials (silicon photonics) due to their high thermal stability; however, other high-performance materials are also being tested.