Electronics and computer science

Both Mid-IR and Raman molecular fingerprint spectroscopies have been shown to be powerful bio-diagnostic tools for specific biomarkers. Enhancing the sensitivity and improving the detection limit of current Mid-IR and Raman spectroscopic platforms are most important to exploit them for early diagnosis of disease biomarkers in point of care setting.

Novel crystalline photonic devices offer exciting opportunities for creating efficient lasers and manipulating the properties of light. Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) is an extraordinary technique using light to create new materials.

Studying mechanical properties of large, complex structures such as a space launch vehicles or Earth’s crust relies on a large array of sophisticated and often, expensive sensors. Due to budget constraints, the number of sensing nodes deployed in such projects are limited to a few hundred which limits the scale and scope of these studies.

Fibre lasers that are increasingly becoming the light source of choice for a wide range of industrial and scientific applications, have spurred the development of new types of rare-earth (i.e., Yb, Er, Tm, and Ho) doped fibres, each with a unique set of properties to match with the specific applications. Since the fibre design and material properties of the fibre core have become critical to the performance of the fibre laser, a more powerful fibre fabrication process is required than the current industry standard process, which is MCVD (Modified Chemical Vapour Deposition) - solution doping technique.

Electronic textiles, or e-textiles, refers to the addition of electronics, sensors, actuators, energy harvesters and energy storage within fabric materials. Textiles are the most common material humans come into physical contact with, so e-textiles provide a ubiquitous platform for a new class of wearable technology where the electronics are hidden and undetectable within otherwise standard items of clothing.

Electronic textiles, or e-textiles, refers to the addition of electronics, sensors, actuators, energy harvesters and energy storage within fabric materials. Textiles are the most common material humans come into physical contact with, so e-textiles provide a ubiquitous platform for a new class of wearable technology where the electronics are hidden and undetectable within otherwise standard items of clothing.

Applications are invited for a fully funded PhD studentship (UK fees and International) to work on triboelectric energy harvesting within garments.  

Two dimensional (2D)-materials are currently at the forefront of an exciting wave of scientific research. Compared to bulk materials, the high confinement in the 2D plane gives rise to unique optical and electronic properties that are advantageous for wide-ranging applications. However, from a photonics perspective, interacting with very thin layers can be inefficient, so that clever techniques must be applied to enhance the light-matter interaction and achieve high quality devices.

Hollow core fibres (HCFs) are an exciting, novel optical fibre technology where light is guided in an air-filled core. We are a world-leading group, which designs, characterises and fabricates state-of-the-art HCFs in our specialist facilities. Recently we reported a new world record low loss for this type of optical fibre, making HCFs contenders for a diverse range of interesting applications, including telecommunications, high power laser delivery and novel medical diagnostics.

Generation of femtosecond and attosecond X-ray pulses using intense laser pulses has transformed ultrafast science. The ability to produce coherent ultrafast X-ray pulses has applications in many areas, from the investigation of ultrafast molecular dynamics to biomedical imaging.

Recent years have seen remarkable progress in the development of hollow core fibres (HCFs). Not only can HCFs transmit extreme laser power levels beyond the fundamental damage threshold of glass, but they can also achieve even lower propagation loss than traditional glass fibres, as demonstrated by researchers at the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC). This progress has led to the demonstration of record kilowatt laser power transmission over a kilometre-range HCF, well beyond the capability of standard glass fibres.

You will investigate a route to high-power visible sources through cladding pumping of RE-doped silica fibres using GaN-LDs. You will be involved in the fabrication of RE (such as Pr3+, Dy3+ and Tb3+) - doped fibres in modified silica glass hosts offering low phonon energy while maintaining the other characteristics of silica fibres. Additionally, you will perform a detailed spectroscopic characterisation of the fabricated fibres and will be involved in the development of visible fibres. You will have access to the the state-of-the-art fibre fabrication facilities and laboratories at the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) in the Zepler Institute.

This project will focus on developing algorithms to allow autonomous systems to make decisions based on information they receive from sensors. Your work will be applied to distributed systems which operate in challenging environments.

The Web Science Institute (WSI) at the University of Southampton is offering PhD studentships for multidisciplinary doctoral research with a particular focus on Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence (AI).  

Moore’s Law is currently being challenged with Nvidia CEO recently claiming it is dead. The scaling of transistors cannot continue due to physical limitations of silicon. 2D semiconductors offer the solution as they can be scaled to the molecular level and create excellent devices such as transistors, light emitters, and photodetectors.

This project will explore the unique capability of hollow core fibres (HFC) for kilowatt-class laser power transmission over kilometre-range distances, as recently demonstrated at the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) [1]. The project will be mainly experimental but will also include some numerical modelling to support the work. The project work will take place across several research groups, covering state-of-the-art high-power laser facilities and world-leading hollow-core fibre fabrication, allowing the candidate to collaborate with experienced researchers in both fields to achieve the project objectives.

Modern society depends massively on the generation, processing and transmission of vast amounts of data. It is predicted that by 2025, 175 zettabytes (175 trillion gigabytes) of data will be generated around the globe. Processing such huge amounts of data demands ever increasing computational power, memory and communication bandwidth. These demands cannot be sustainably met by conventional digital electronic technologies. Indeed, CMOS-based von Neumann architectures are now approaching a widely accepted ‘efficiency-wall’, a fundamental limit on the number of operations per unit energy, while the number of operations required continues to grow at unprecedented rates.

Applications are invited for a PhD studentship funded by the National Grid to conduct research at the Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory on subjects related to transmission of electrical energy, renewable energy generation and electrical insulation materials.

Fibre optics has transformed telecommunications and profoundly impacted industrial manufacturing, medical endoscopy and structural sensing. In many applications however, solid fibres are operating close to fundamental physical limits imposed by the glass forming their core. A transformative new technology is emerging where light is guided in air or vacuum, in a Hollow Core Fibre (HCF). HCFs have the potential to become the best optical waveguide ever produced and to bring positive impacts in many application fields.

Hollow-core optical fibres (HCFs) offer a radically new solution for laser delivery as they guide light in a gas-filled core, as opposed to glass in conventional optical fibres. HCF-based mid-infrared laser delivery systems could open exciting possibilities for diverse and valuable applications, including surgical treatment, gas sensing, and materials processing.

We are working in collaboration with a large EU consortium to create a reprogrammable neuromorphic photonic platform for a variety of applications from telecommunications to biosensing. We use the latest generation of phase change materials to create highly efficient in-memory photonic functionality with novel materials that allow the upscaling of the technology.

Artificial Intelligence has been hugely successful in solving complex tasks and a significant progress has been made in bringing the utility of deep neural networks on tiny resource-constrained embedded devices via optimizing inference. However, learning the deep learning models on the device still remains challenging due to the mismatch between the computation complexity of deep learning models against the resource availability on the device. In this project, we aim to tackle this challenge.

Electronic devices such as computers, mobile phones and data centres account for a significant amount of the world's energy consumption. We need to invent novel technologies to deliver high-speed, low-power, and efficient computing and communication.

We are looking for a PhD student to work on the design and numerical simulation of the next generation of high-power fibre lasers. This project is part of a major new initiative funded by the UK Research Council at the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), University of Southampton.

Small, semiconducting nanoparticles known as quantum dots (QDs) are being extensively researched for use in a wide range of electronic devices, including solar cells, light detectors, light-emitting diodes, and transistors. Their benefits include being simple and inexpensive to produce, as well as the ability to deposit thin films for device manufacturing using processes that may be scaled up for solution processing.

Hollow-core optical fibres guide light in a central hole inside a silica microstructure. These newly developed fibres exceed traditional solid fibres used in the past 40 years in every metric: lower attenuation, nonlinearity, latency, and better high-power laser transmission. However, the central hole where light is transmitted is typically filled with air and for several applications even air limits the fibre performance.

Two dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) materials, such as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) are emerging as revolutionary components in nanophotonics. Recently, defects and strains in these vdW materials have attracted considerable interest as they can be engineered to realise quantum light emission, such as single-photon emitters, a crucial element for the development of quantum information technologies.

Fibre lasers have seen a rapid development in output power and performance over the past three decades and have revolutionised the application space for photonics. However the development of fibre lasers with wavelength-flexible single-frequency sources is lagging other areas of fibre lasers research.

Wearable technologies are revolutionising our daily lives, integrating everyday objects into our clothes, accessories and even our bodies. How can we power these without using rigid batteries that require overnight charging?  Using our body’s heat, thermoelectric generators can provide uninterrupted renewable energy for wearable devices.