Laser-Fabricated Lab on a Chip for Detection of Gases

The PhD project will be on developing an integrated photonic platform for detecting various gases. The emphasis will be put on detection of methane, which is very important being one of the major contributors to greenhouse effect. The work will involve development of femtosecond laser written photonic circuits, which will be chemically functionalised to introduce selectivity for the desired gases. The circuit development will require to optimise laser writing process, analyse performance of the fabricated waveguides using available modelling tools and experimental characterization setups. The optimised design will allow to expose the evanescent field to the functionalised surface enabling chemical sensing via optical means. The chemical functionalisation will require the PhD student to develop a set of chemical procedures necessary to achieve the desired effect. The preliminary results, where methane detection was performed using D-shaped fibre, demonstrated feasibility of using silica waveguides to selectively detect and measure the concentration of gases. The work will be carried in the collaboration with National Oceanography Centre.