Application specific photonic integrated circuits and the sensing industry

Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) and Indium Phosphide (InP) based Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) are presently mainly studied in the ICT world for datacenter interconnections, telecom infrastructure and consumer electronics interfaces but its potential is so strong that many other application areas will embrace and exploit the technology: these include environmental and bio-sensing, avionics as well as automotive. Together with TripleX™ technology - born and raised towards sensing application and low-loss waveguiding - both SOI and InP PICs, have enabled a novel technology platform for sensing applications, based on Application Specific Photonic Integrated Circuits (ASPICs). In this review paper, we will present this ASPIC platform together with a summary of the key technological achievements accomplished in recent years which made it possible. Furthermore, the current and future possibilities for accessing the platform by industrial players is presented, as well as other key aspects, such as packaging, integration with other technologies - i.e. electronics, fluidics or MEMs - and process scalability towards high volume manufacturing.