Future Manufacturing Hubs call for feasibility studies

The Future Photonics Hub is seeking proposals that address the Grand Challenge of photonics integration, supporting the development of the technology platforms, or new applications of Hub developed technology.

The Hub is seeking proposals in the following areas:

● Photonics integration: The aim of this platform is the grand challenge of integrated devices across all four platforms with an eye on cost reduction, manufacturing efficiency, and the capture of ‘smart’ value at component level.

● Speciality optical fibre: Focus on two key challenges in fibre manufacturing to meet short and long term industry needs: improving loss, gain and power handling and increasing the transmission window to enable new applications.

● Light generation and delivery: Devices such as quantum-cascade lasers, antimonide-based lasers/LEDs and fibre supercontinuum sources have generated new markets in areas such as sensing, imaging, healthcare and spectroscopy. This platform will drive the transition required for growth in these photonics-enabled industries, from discrete components to low-cost, compact, integrated platforms.

● Silicon photonics: Silicon photonics has made major advances in functionality at the chip level, but integration remains an obstacle to the development of the technology. New directions within the Hub include hybrid integration (e.g. for efficient modulators) and diamond photonics circuits.

● Large-scale manufacture of metamaterials and 2D materials: Metamaterials and 2D materials provide extraordinary properties that disrupt conventional ideas on device performance. This platform focuses on low-cost, scalable manufacturing of metamaterials that has so far been an obstacle to their proliferation in devices and systems.