At the Laser World of Photonics India 2025, Thorlabs, a photonics company, showcased optics, lasers, modulators, and detectors. Instruments like spectrometers and power meters were scattered across the booth. Stephan Hallwig, Head of Business Development and Marketing Communication EMEA, explained that the industry’s applications extend to semiconductor, medical, and telecommunication.
The display, in a way, described a complete workflow approach as it covered generating lasers from visible to deep infrared, to manipulating, measuring and characterizing them. Key products included C-band lasers for telecom wavelengths and lithium niobate modulators. The booth also featured their newest release at the time, a wave meter that measures spectrum and power from 600 to 1700 nanometers, which launched in August last year. The display included a Raman spectrometer, which Stephan described as a device capable of characterizing substances ranging from liquids to pills. A user can simply insert their sample and use the provided software to fetch the component analysis results. The company positions itself as providing the full spectrum of photonics tools, from laser generation through measurement and application development.
To go a little beyond their booth at the event, in a breakthrough announced in May 2025, Thorlabs partnered with Aeluma and pulled off wafer-scale integration of aluminium gallium arsenide on standard 200mm CMOS silicon wafers with support from the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense. This is something that could possibly accelerate quantum computing and communications tech towards commercial territory. Innovations like these represent the convergence of photonics and electronics that could transform industries.
