Research project

CORNERSTONE

Project overview

This proposal seeks funding to acquire a refurbished stepper and associated wafer coater, tools to enable photolithographic patterning of semiconductor wafers for device and circuit fabrication. The stepper will be located at Southampton University in the recently opened £120m cleanroom complex. It will effectively increase the capacity of the cleanroom complex, which will in turn facilitate and underpin a wealth of world class research.
Not only will research at Southampton be enhanced, but Southampton (SOU), Glasgow (GLA), and Surrey (SUR) universities will pool resources to establish a Silicon Photonics Fabrication Capability within the UK, to satisfy an increasing demand for the fabrication of Silicon Photonics devices from the UK’s premier researchers. This will encourage wider usage of world class equipment within the UK, in line with EPSRC policy.
We seek funding for both the equipment and 3.5 RAs across the 3 institutions, over a 4 year period, to establish the Capability. Access to a very significant inventory of additional equipment at these 3 universities will be facilitated.
The project is extremely timely, as silicon foundry services around the world are moving towards a model in which standard platforms and devices will be offered, making it almost impossible for researchers to carry out innovative work at the device level, or in non-standard platforms.

Staff

Lead researchers
Other researchers

Professor Frederic Gardes PhD

Professor
Connect with Frederic

Professor Goran Mashanovich

Personal Chair

Research interests

  • Silicon Photonics
  • Photonics Integrated Circuits
  • Sensors
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Professor Harold Chong

Professor of Electronic Engineering
Connect with Harold

Collaborating research institutes, centres and groups

Research outputs

Callum J. Stirling, Milos Nedeljković, Colin Mitchell, David J. Rowe & Goran Z. Mashanovich, 2024, Photonics and Nanostructures - Fundamentals and Applications, 58(101223)
Type: article
Weiwei Zhang, Martin Ebert, Ke Li, Bigeng Chen, Xingzhao Yan, Han Du, Mehdi Banakar, Dehn Tran, Callum Littlejohns, Adam Scofield , Guomin Yu, Roshanak Shafiiha, Aaron Zilkie, Graham T. Reed & David Thomson, 2023, Nature Photonics, 17(3), 273–279
Type: article
Graham T. Reed, Shenghao Liu, David J. Thomson, Weiwei Zhang, Fanfan Meng, Xingzhao Yan, Callum G. Littlejohns, Han Du, Wei Cao, Mehdi Banakar, Martin Ebert, Vadivukkarasi Jeyaselvan, Dehn Tran, Periklis Petropoulos & Li Ke, 2022
Type: bookChapter
C.R. Coggrave, P.D. Ruiz, C.A. Pallikarakis, J.M. Huntley, H. Du, M. Banakar, X. Yan, D.T. Tran & C.G. Littlejohns, 2022
Type: conference