About the project
Applications are invited for multiple PhD studentships to be undertaken within the silicon photonics group at the University of Southampton. The successful applicants will join a research group of more than 50 postgraduate students and researchers working on silicon photonics technologies and photonic interconnects technologies in close collaboration with academia (University of Cambridge, University College London and Cardiff University) and industrial partners
The work will be developed as part of two multimillion pounds projects running for a period of 5 years and funded by Industry and UKRI/EPSRC UK:
Quantum Dot On Silicon systems for communications, information processing and sensing (QUDOS)
Rockley Photonics and the University of Southampton: a prosperity partnership
These projects are tackling major technological roadblocks associated to silicon photonics and aims to demonstrate the monolithic integration of III/V lasers with CMOS photonic waveguiding components.
This breakthrough will enable the development of innovative photonic circuits to serve the requirements of a wide range of low-cost optical interconnects and sensing technologies. The student will work alongside research fellows, PhD students, industrial partners, and national and international collaborators to develop the co-integration of photonics circuits formed of III/V compounds grown on silicon and silicon photonics circuits.
We are looking for several enthusiastic candidates with background in photonics, electronics, physics or material science to take on specific aspects of these projects. The work will focus on device simulation and design followed by process development and fabrication using the best University clean room facility in the UK. Device characterisation will be performed in our state-of-the-art silicon photonics laboratory and in collaboration with our academic partners.
The Zepler Institute PhD comprises a solid education for a research career. The structured first year involves attending our training programme running in parallel with carrying out your research project. This provides a smooth transition from your degree course towards the more open-ended research that takes place in the following years under the guidance of your supervisors.
We expect the vast majority of our students to present their work at international conferences and to write papers in leading academic journals as their research progresses. Students will emerge from the PhD with skills at the forefront of future photonics and semiconductor research and will benefit from many opportunities to interact with the wider community of PhD students across the Southampton Campus.
The Zepler Institute is the leading photonics and nanoelectronics research institute in the UK and possibly in Europe. It comprises state-of-the-art cleanrooms for optical fibre, planar photonics, silicon and bio-photonics fabrication and over 80 laboratories.
Computer simulations will benefit from Southampton’s high-performance computing cluster Iridis, one of the largest supercomputers in the UK. A PhD at the ORC has enabled our past graduates to make successful careers in academia, in national scientific laboratories, and as scientists or business leaders in industry.
Our research papers, patents, spin-off companies and these successful alumni taken together place Southampton among the top institutes worldwide.
