Accelerating UK growth through investment in silicon photonics infrastructure: Policy workshop outputs, 15th of October 2025, London

Abstract

The United Kingdom faces a defining moment in deciding on how best to exploit the opportunities offered by silicon photonics (SiPh), the integration of light-based components onto silicon chips with many applications across sectors like AI hardware, advanced connectivity, defence, quantum technologies and sensing.
This report summarises the findings and discussions of a national policy workshop convened by the CORNERSTONE Photonics Innovation Centre in October 2025. The event brought together industry leaders, academic researchers, and policymakers to explore how coordinated investment in SiPh infrastructure, alongside other system enablers, could accelerate company growth and secure the UK’s position as a global leader. The insights here aim to represent a collective view across industry, academia, and government.

The workshop concluded that SiPh represents one of the most strategically significant
opportunities for UK industrial growth this decade, but that the window to act is closing rapidly. Without decisive and coordinated investment, the UK risks losing ground to international competitors that have already begun to build the foundations of industrial-scale production. At the heart of discussion was recognition that the UK’s current model – world-class research excellence without the domestic capability to scale the sector — is not sustainable.

A silicon photonics pilot line is needed as a semi-industrial facility that bridges the gap between laboratory innovation and scalable manufacturing. Participants agreed that investing in such a pilot line is a crucial missing link that can help transform research excellence into commercial output. A pilot line will enable companies to design, test, and validate new devices and systems domestically, and would help stimulate wider investment in the associated skills, training, and collaboration that are necessary to UK success in this field.

Establishing a high-quality pilot line would signal the UK’s intent to take seriously the opportunities presented by SiPh and establish the country’s own model of doing so – one built around agility, integration, and design excellence rather than scale alone.

More information

Identifiers

Catalogue record

Export record