Leading lights lead in light

A consortium of UK researchers has been awarded over £5m from the

(EPSRC) for silicon photonics research.

The team is drawn from Leeds, Warwick, Southampton, St Andrews and Surrey universities.

Dr Rob Kelsall, who leads the Leeds group, said: ‘Computers and other electronic equipment have been driven by both industry and consumer demand to deliver ever-faster functionality and communications. We expect to be able to send and receive larger files of data, images and video - but this is asking a lot from copper wires.

‘There would be a huge speed advantage if we could transmit this data using light. We already see this on a large scale in long-distance telephone calls, where the optical fibres under the Atlantic enable huge numbers of calls to be made to and from the US. We now need to do this on a micro scale.’

The project is looking to develop demonstrator systems in which all the optical components are made from silicon.