Photonic Integrated Circuits for Metrology

This project will significantly advance practical optoelectronic-integrated-circuits (OEICs) with a suite of examples relevant to a major high-tech manufacturing company.

The first circuit will use chromatic confocal profilometry, which is an established technique for measuring the shape of industrial parts and, where the part is transparent, its thickness. Systems commonly comprise a fibre-coupled broadband light source, a fibre splitter and a spectrometer all in a remote, control box, and an objective lens with axial chromatic dispersion at the point of measurement. Creating an equivalent chip based system will enable applications such as in-situ, on co-ordinate measuring machines, due to the size and weight advantages and the removal of the need for fibre routed through the machine.

We will investigate novel schemes for integrating all the individual components into a photonic integrated circuit. The work will require the development of efficient, matched, emitters and detectors, the use of waveguides and, depending on the scheme or schemes investigated in hardware, spectrometers, modulators, analogue circuits, all integrated on a single chip. The successful outcome from the research will result in a novel, disruptive, technology for chromatic confocal profilometry with potential application to many areas of spectral measurement. Further ground breaking systems should follow.