19 Jan 2022
Multimillion-pound program led by Zepler Institute / ORC, Southampton, for new projects into hollow core and fiber performs.
The multimillion-pound Airguide Photonics programme, led within the University of Southampton’s Zepler Institute, is funding five ambitious research projects intended to yield the next generation of hollow-core fiber technology.The Airguide Photonics Collaboration Fund is investing in some of the UK's leading fiber optics researchers to make further strides in its research challenge and identify new real-world applications.
Currently, the performance of fiber optics technology is limited in many instances due to the fact that the light is confined to a solid glass core, which places fundamental restrictions on the power and wavelength range over which signals can be transmitted, the speed at which signals propagate, and its sensitivity to the external environment.
Airguide Photonics, hosted at the Zepler Institute's Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), is an EPSRC-funded Programme Grant unlocking the vastly superior but still largely unexplored potential of hollow-core fibers.
New fibers, networks, and manufacture
The £6 million ($8.2 million) programme is exploring the performance limits of these fibers, creating innovative means of manufacturing preforms, establishing ways to reliably interconnect to conventional fibers and devices and developing application-specific fibers while engaging with academic and industrial partners worldwide.
Professor David Richardson, Deputy Director of the ZI and Airguide Principal Investigator, commented, “As hollow-core fiber technology matures the Collaboration Fund is proving an incredibly effective mechanism to empower the next generation of leaders to uncover new areas of application.
“The Fund has already opened up a raft of new, unexpected opportunities that integrate well with other key areas of UK research expertise and investment and is already generating publications and additional research grant income – including a recent Prosperity Partnership grant that places Southampton at the heart of innovative drug development.”
Five Airguide projects
The latest Fund has awarded grants to the following five projects and the Airguide team is excited by the prospects of working with these new collaborators on these new topics:
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