Dr Francesco Poletti from the University’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) has won an European Research Council (ERC) Award granting €2.75M over 5 years for his ‘LightPipe’ project.
Francesco was awarded the ERC Consolidator Grant to support his proposal to develop revolutionary new optical fibres.
Having previously been granted two prestigious Postdoctoral Research Fellowships from the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society, this latest grant is a considerable achievement for someone still in the early stages of their career.
Commenting on his award and what it will mean for his project, Francesco said:
“I am incredibly pleased to be awarded such a prestigious grant. The funding will help my research find transformative ways of increasing the information capacity and power delivery capability of optical fibres. This project aims to develop radically new optical fibres that can keep up with the relentless growth in global data traffic and in laser output power, which roughly doubles every two years.
“In many applications fibres are already being operated very close to fundamental physical limits of the glass that forms their core, limiting data capacity or optical intensity that can be transmitted through them. The LightPipe project will address these global challenges by replacing the glass core with an air filled one, purposely surrounded by thin glass membranes to enhance the light guidance properties and form what is arguably the ‘ultimate’ hollow core optical fibre.”
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