Learning About Silicon Photonics

The key to Voyant’s low-cost integrated LiDAR is silicon photonics, a technology platform that leverages semiconductor manufacturing techniques to make optical integrated circuits instead of electrical integrated circuits. Billions of dollars of R&D investments into the electronics ecosystem over multiple decades have made silicon an inexpensive and robust platform on which to build nano-sized structures. Silicon is also remarkably good not only for making transistors to manipulate electricity, but also for manipulating light.

To best understand silicon photonics there is no better source than Michal Lipson. As an accomplished researcher and avid speaker on all things “Si Ph”, she is often speaking about the underlying science and engineering that make Voyant possible.

Here are two of her many talks. The first one is light, less than 20 minutes long. The second is heavy, offers much more detail, but will take you three times longer. Enjoy!