Advanced microstuctured photonic devices: Materials engineering using supercritical fluid technology.

Scientific and technological interest in 'metamaterials' - periodically repeating, synthetic mesocomposite structures that are specifically designed to circumvent inconvenient bulk optical material properties - has burgeoned due to the wealth of potential novel applications that they allow, such as advances in optical computing, biophotonics and all optical network switching. In this proposal, we seek to re-engineer the metamaterials concept to allow the doping and deposition of a variety of materials within the voids of photonic crystal lattices by uniquely combining and exploiting expertise from world leading centres of excellence in the highly diverse fields of supercritical chemical fluid deposition (SCFD) technology and photonic device science. SCFD is uniquely suited to the modification of microstructured materials such as 'holey' fibres, which incorporate complex 2D arrays of holes running throughout their length. Using this technology, an array of N holes can be utilised as a template for selective impregnation, leading to the formation of order 2 to the power N possible combinations of composite fibre profile that are impossible to create by any other means. This could lead to the next generation of microstructured waveguide devices with dramatically enhanced functionality that fully exploit the interface between optical device physics, supercritical chemistry and advanced materials engineering.