Telecom spectrometers

Prof Edmund Linfield will lead the project in the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, with Dr John Cunningham and Prof Giles Davies.

The commercial advantage of developing a spectrometer at the telecom wavelength is that the researchers will be able to use mass-produced telecom components such as lasers, fibres and couplers that could reduce the cost of a system by 90 per cent compared to existing THz systems.

’The collaboration with Leeds University could lead to low-cost, compact and easy-to-use terahertz diagnostic and imaging systems for applications in medical imaging, explosives detection, airport security and manufacturing quality control,’ said Thomas Braun, president and chief executive of T-Ray Science.

The Leeds researchers have also received a grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to fund their work on the project.

T-Ray supported the grant application and will assist in the project through laboratory tests of the newly developed system. The company will also have the opportunity to license any Intellectual Property that may result from the project.