The University’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) is to lead a £6.1m EPSRC-funded programme to develop the next generation of fibre optics and position the UK as a world-leader in this technology.
Bringing together expertise in the ORC with over 25 research organisations and industry partners, Airguide Photonics will transform future fibre networks and generate enormous potential for a multitude of uses ranging from a faster more responsive internet, through space exploration, to laser based manufacturing and bioengineering.
Led by Professor David Richardson, Deputy Director of the ORC, the programme’s research team will explore the performance limits of hollow-core fibre technology – where the glass ‘core’ of conventional optical fibres used the world over, is replaced with air, or a vacuum, to produce hollow-core ‘light pipes’. Guiding light through air in this way, rather than through glass, will increase the fibre’s bandwidth, power handling and light transmission quality.
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