Aston gets €1m Euro grant
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Aston University has won three grants totalling more than €1million to help revolutionise the use of fibre optic cables in engineering, medicine and telecommunications. The awards come from Marie Curie Actions, an EU funded competition within the Sixth Framework Programme.
In the first project, Aston’s Photonics Research Group will use ultraviolet laser radiation to create fibre Bragg gratings inside plastic optical fibres. This will allow the fibres to measure temperature accurately inside the human body or to determine stresses and strains in bridges and aircraft wings.
The major goal of the second project is to develop a new fabrication technology for waveguide microchip lasers. Looking to create a compact and robust laser with monolithic cavity based on crystals doped with rare earth or transition metal ions, the project will promote miniaturisation of solid state lasers and will facilitate their integration in electronic systems.
The third project targets prototype all optical regeneration solutions related both to optical fibre networks and optical interconnects.
Aston’s Photonics Research Group is the second largest of its kind in the UK, with some 50 staff researching the technology.
