non volatile photonics memories for silicon photonics

Project description:

Applications are invited for a PhD studentship to be undertaken within the silicon photonics group at the University of Southampton. The successful applicants will join a world leading research group of more than 50 postgraduate students and researchers working on silicon photonics technologies and photonic interconnects technologies in close collaboration with academia and industry. The project will be undertaken as part of a European collaboration within the EU project Plasmoniac (http://plasmoniac.eu ).

The project is tackling a major technological roadblock associated to silicon photonics circuits and aims to demonstrate photonic memories based on CMOS photonic waveguiding structures. The potential breakthrough derived from these components will enable the development of innovative reconfigurable photonic circuits in applications such as artificial intelligence and in particular neuromorphic. The student will work alongside research assistants (https://gp-iv-photonics.org/) industrial partners, national and international collaborators to develop innovative integrated photonics circuits.
We are looking for an enthusiastic candidate with background in photonics, electronics, physics or material science to participate to the development of non-volatile photonic memories. The work will focus on device simulation and design followed by process development and fabrication using one of the best clean room facility in the UK (https://www.zeplerinstitute.com/facilities/cleanrooms). Device characterisation will be performed in our state-of-the-art silicon photonics laboratory and in collaboration with our academic partners.

The PhD programme:

The Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) 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 ORC is the leading photonics 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 amongst the top institutes worldwide.

Please contact Dr Frederic Gardes on email: [Email Address Removed] to discuss the project prior to the submission of the online application.