Photonics is becoming a major player in the agri-food industry contributing to more efficient, sustainable, and safer food production, and to enable smart farming.
Improvements in display design and development are enhancing augmented and virtual reality systems, providing increased capabilities across the retail market.
Solid-state lighting (SSL) has civil applications like traffic lights, vehicle, street and parking lot lights, train marker lights, building exteriors or remote controls.
Global internet traffic is growing exponentially, and increasing fast, secure broadband connectivity is now a top priority for governments, industry, and providers of critical infrastructure.
Optoelectronic devices are used in a wide variety of application areas such as optical fiber communications, laser technology, and all kinds of optical metrology.
Optical technologies and photonics are playing a key role in non-invasive methods for the early detection, monitoring and improved treatment of cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer, and many other diseases.
While LEDs have been around for several years, they are beginning to be replaced by OLEDs (organic light emitting diodes), which provide improved colour fidelity, efficiency and operation stability and substantial energy savings.
Optical technologies and photonics are increasingly used for treatment and early diagnosis as they are minimally invasive, reduce the length of hospital stay and reduce recovery times.
Photonics and optics are playing key roles in sensing, communications and weapon systems for security and defence, as well as for Critical Infrastructure Protection due to the increase in use of unmanned vehicles that can be used as spy or attack devices.