The UK’s only deep-ultraviolet projection lithography machine will soon be used to build a new generation of photonic circuits that combine light, electronics, and lasers on a single chip. Today’s silicon photonics—which uses light rather than electricity to move data—works well for standard telecoms wavelengths, but it cannot handle the newer applications emerging in sensing, medical diagnostics, and data-centre interconnects. These require different materials and the ability to integrate lasers and detectors directly onto the chip. Without an accessible fabrication service, UK researchers must either build their own bespoke devices or go abroad. This project will add three new silicon photonics platforms to the existing CORNERSTONE service, then offer them free of charge to UK academics for the final six months to prove their reliability. If successful, it will give the country’s photonics community a low-cost, shared route to prototype chips that can, for example, detect pollutants in water, monitor structural health in bridges, or speed up optical communications in data centres. The team will also assess demand for turning the service into a permanent EPSRC National Research Facility.
View original technical description
Southampton and Glasgow Universities currently contribute to a project entitled CORNERSTONE which has established a new Silicon Photonics fabrication capability, based on the Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) platform, for academic researchers in the UK. The project is due to end in December 2019, after which time the CORNERSTONE fabrication capability will be self-sustaining, with users paying for the service. Based upon demand from the UK's premier photonics researchers, this proposal seeks funding to extend the capability that is offered to UK researchers beyond the current SOI platforms, to include emerging Silicon Photonics platforms, together with capabilities facilitating integration of photonic circuits with electronics, lasers and detectors. These emerging platforms enable a multitude of new applications that have emerged over the past several years, some of which are not suitable for the SOI platform, and some of which complement the SOI platform by serving applications at other wavelengths. Southampton, and Glasgow universities will work together to bring the new platforms to a state of readiness to deliver the new functionality via a multi-project-wafer (MPW) mechanism to satisfy significantly increasing demand, and deliver them to UK academic users free of charge (to the user) for the final six months of the project, in order to establish credibility. This will encourage wider usage of world class equipment within the UK, in line with EPSRC policy. We seek funding for 3 PDRAs and 2 technicians across the 2 institutions, over a 2 year period, to facilitate access to a very significant inventory of equipment at these 2 universities, including access to UK's only deep-UV projection lithography capability. During this 2 year period, we will canvas UK demand for the capability to continue to operate as an EPSRC National Research Facility, and if so, to establish a statement of need. We currently have 50 partners/users providing in-kind support to a value of to £1,705,000 and cash to the value of £173,450.
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know