Prof. Yidong Huang published an editorial "Twenty Years of Photonics" on ACS Photonics in February 2021. ACS Photonics is an academic journal of American Chemical Society with an impact factor of 6.86. Prof. Huang has been the associate editor of ACS Photonics since 2018. This editorial reviewed the progress of photonics in the past 20 years and look forward to the development trend in the next 20 years.

Prof. Huang pointed out in the editorial that in the past two decades, the field of photonics has made remarkable achievements in the discovery of new mechanisms, the invention of new structures/materials and the exploration of new applications. For photonic devices, phonon, exciton, surface plasma polariton, and other quasi particles come to the stage. Through the interaction of nanostructure/metamaterial with electron/photon, the realization of new functions of photonic devices is facilitated. Free electron has also become a new role of photonic device, which breaks through the traditional device principle based on the interaction between bound electron and light field. As for the applications, photonic technology has expanded from mature optical communication to sensing, energy, medical treatment, aerospace and other fields, and produced a number of noteworthy new breakthroughs. Among them, the eye-catching real-time dynamic spectral imaging technology will bring a new dimension of spectral information to many application fields. Significant advances in optical neural networks and optical quantum information are also listed.

Prof. Huang outlook in the editorial that breakthroughs at the device level will revolutionize the system. New devices will emerge in the new wavelength band, such as ultraviolet or terahertz range. Lidar may be ready for widespread use and virtual/augmented reality technology will bring people different experiences. The research of optical computing will attract more attention. Optical quantum technology will be active in the field of precision measurement and sensing, including the quantum effect based electromagnetic field, gravity field detection technology, single photon imaging…… The next 20 years will usher in the era of vigorous development of photonic technology.

Links to the editorial：https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsphotonics.0c01944

                                  https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acsphotonics.0c01944