[nanoPost] Photonic crystals

My key activity in this area is the work on photonic crystals. These are periodic microstructures, typically realised in seminconductors such as silicon or GaAs/InP, that control the emission and propagation of light.

The periodicity is of order 300-400 nm, but to control their specific function and achieve the best performance,we need to control size and fabrication tolerances, including roughness, down to a few nanometres. See an example for a photonic crystal cavity in the attached figure; some of the holes around the centre have been deliberately distorted and displaced to achieve a cavity with a particularlty high quality factor. If all the holes were the same, the performance would be much lower.

Photonic crystals facilitate novel photonic circuits that operate on a lengthscale typical to the microelectronics industry. In the long term, highly integrated photonic microcircuits can be created.
In the medium term, they could feed into sub-systems for telecommunications applications that may supplement optical routers and switches.
A somewhat different, yet related area is in biomedical detection. Within a year or two, we may be able to produce structured substrates for highly efficient protein detection.

Our technology is designed for a research environment, so will need to be augmented and made more reliable to consider commercial operation. In particular, we are currently seeking funding for a high performance etching machine to further improve the quality of the etching we can offer.

Finally, industrial input as to the opportunities we can access with our technology, and the posing of relevant problems that we may be able to address, would be very valuable. Our research frequently generates a solution looking for a problem, so understanding what the real problems are that we can address, especially outwith telecomms, would be very worthwhile.

Scotland