£1.85million funding for UK consortium
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The UK's Technology Strategy Board has invested £1.85million in a collaborative project to develop integrated InP-based photonic devices and new active materials.
The project is part of the Technology Strategy Board's Collaborative Research and Development programme, which supports the research and development of new technologies that will underpin products and services of the future.
The organisations involved are CIP Technologies, Bookham Technology, SAFC Hitech, Loughborough Surface Analysis, the University of Sheffield and the University of Surrey.
The three year project is called ETOE II (Extended temperature optoelectronics) and continues the collaboration by the same partners in ETOE 1.
The new project will focus on the development of reliable aluminium containing active photonic devices, to support the high temperature operation of advanced functions.
The project will also look at alternative active layer materials for InP and GaAs devices, including nitrogen, antimony and bismuth.
ETOE II also plans to tackle problems such as power wastage because of operating temperature ranges controlled by local thermoelectric cooling.
By raising the allowable operating temperature range of optoelectronic components and reducing or eliminating the fundamental need for cooling, results from the project are expected to lead to high speed, high power integrated devices that can operate uncooled. This could enable reductions in power consumption and closer stacking of optical interfaces.
ETOE II's project manager, Ian Lealman (pictured), said: "This project builds on successful technology developed under ETOE I and I confidently expect it will result in advanced monolithic photonic devices offering higher speed operation, wider temperature performance and greater tuneability."
The Technology Strategy Board's lead technologist, Mike Biddle, added: "We are committed to stimulating the development and deployment of technologies which, as well as benefiting society, also represent major business opportunities for the UK. This project brings together the UK's world class expertise to research and develop an innovative technology that could be exploited globally. We are delighted to offer our support and investment to CIP and their partners in this important project."
