Photonics & Materials Stack

Moving AI data with light now reaches past the optical module and into the package itself, pulling glass, indium phosphide and gallium nitride deeper into the chip supply chain. (yolegroup.com) Photonics is the business of sending data as light instead of electrical signals, which cuts power loss over distance inside data centers and AI clusters. Yole Group said in March that photonic interconnect is becoming a “foundational technology” as AI infrastructure expands beyond a pure compute story. (yolegroup.com) That shift showed up at OFC 2026 in Los Angeles, where the conference said co-packaged optics, optical input-output and 1.6-terabit and 3.2-terabit links were central themes. OFC reported nearly 18,000 attendees and 706 exhibitors at the March 17-19 event. (ofcconference.org) Co-packaged optics means placing optical engines close to the switch chip so shorter electrical paths burn less power. Broadcom says that design integrates optics and silicon on a single packaged substrate to address bandwidth and power limits. (broadcom.com) The substrate is the base layer that holds and connects chiplets, memory and optics, and glass is getting attention because it stays flatter than organic material as packages grow larger. Intel said in September 2023 that glass substrates could deliver an order-of-magnitude improvement in design rules and were aimed at production in the latter part of this decade. (intel.com) Corning already sells glass into that workflow through carrier wafers and through-glass-via products. The company says its advanced packaging glass carriers can reduce in-process warp by up to 40%, and its semiconductor glass wafer line includes products for through-glass vias, or vertical connections drilled through glass. (corning.com 1) (corning.com 2) Corning’s own technical papers describe why: glass is an electrical insulator with low high-frequency loss, and its stiffness and tunable thermal expansion help control package warp. Those traits matter as designers try to stack more high-speed connections into larger AI packages. (corning.com) The optical side of the stack also starts with epitaxy, the process of growing ultra-thin crystal layers that act like the active lanes in a laser or power device. Veeco said on February 27, 2026 that it booked multi-system Lumina metal-organic chemical vapor deposition and Spector ion-beam deposition orders for manufacturing indium-phosphide optical components. (veeco.com) Indium phosphide is used in lasers and other photonic devices for data communications, while gallium nitride is used in power electronics that help AI systems move and regulate electricity more efficiently. Veeco said in November 2025 that it also received a Propel 300 order from a major gallium-nitride-on-silicon power chip maker serving data center, industrial and automotive markets. (veeco.com 1) (veeco.com 2) Foundries and device makers are also broadening the materials mix behind optical networking. LightCounting said Intel remains a silicon photonics manufacturer, STMicroelectronics re-entered silicon photonics in early 2025, and co-packaged optics offers the largest future opportunity in the transceiver business. (lightcounting.com) The result is a longer bill of materials for AI networking: lasers and photonic chips, the tools that grow their crystal layers, and the glass that keeps giant packages flat enough to assemble. The next checkpoint is commercialization at scale, with OFC already pitching toward 2027 as vendors race to turn show-floor demos into shipping systems. (ofcconference.org)