Current research degree projects
Explore our current postgraduate research degree and PhD opportunities.
Explore our current postgraduate research degree and PhD opportunities.
Wearable technologies are revolutionising our daily lives, integrating everyday objects into our clothes, accessories and even our bodies. But how can we power these without using rigid batteries that require overnight charging? The answer is renewable energy sources such as ourselves. Using our body’s heat, thermoelectric generators can provide uninterrupted renewable energy for wearable devices.
The University of Southampton is expanding its PhD research in the area of Quantum Technology Engineering. In addition to the research project outlined below you will receive substantial training in scientific, technical, and commercial skills.Quantum technologies for computing, timekeeping and sensing require atomic wavefunctions to be split and recombined with precision and fidelity. Often, these operations are performed using pulses of laser light, and are affected when atoms move to different beam intensities or incur Doppler shifts. Intriguingly, in the analogous field of magnetic resonance, pulses have been designed that tolerate such variations by shaping the phase and amplitude within each pulse. We have already used these NMR optimal control techniques to design individual ‘mirror’ and ‘beamsplitter’ pulses for atom interferometry.
The University of Southampton is expanding its PhD research in the area of Quantum Technology Engineering. In addition to the research project outlined below you will receive substantial training in scientific, technical, and commercial skills.
The University of Southampton is expanding its PhD research in the area of Quantum Technology Engineering. In addition to the research project outlined below you will receive substantial training in scientific, technical, and commercial skills.
The University of Southampton is expanding its PhD research in the area of Quantum Technology Engineering. In addition to the research project outlined below you will receive substantial training in scientific, technical, and commercial skills.
The University of Southampton is expanding its PhD research in the area of Quantum Technology Engineering. In addition to the research project outlined below you will receive substantial training in scientific, technical, and commercial skills.Membrane quantum well lasers contact-bonded onto the surface of sapphire or silicon carbide have been demonstrated to create perfect Gaussian beams. We have the capability to release these membranes and position them in the integrated photonics cleanroom on top of substrates and we have demonstrated external cavity lasing with them.
The University of Southampton is expanding its PhD research in the area of Quantum Technology Engineering. In addition to the research project outlined below you will receive substantial training in scientific, technical, and commercial skills.Colloidal quantum dots are semiconductor nanocrystals that sit in between molecular and bulk materials. Their small size (typically <10 nm in diameter) are comparable to the material’s Bohr radius, leading to quantum confinement of excitons and size- and composition-tunable optoelectronic properties. Compared to other quantum-confined nanostructures (e.g. epitaxial quantum dots, wires or wells) they have the advantage of being solution-processable, which makes them well suited for mass production of devices.
The University of Southampton is expanding its PhD research in the area of Quantum Technology Engineering. In addition to the research project outlined below you will receive substantial training in scientific, technical, and commercial skills.
The University of Southampton is expanding its PhD research in the area of Quantum Technology Engineering. In addition to the research project outlined below you will receive substantial training in scientific, technical, and commercial skills.Membrane quantum well waveguide lasers are a more flexible route to hybrid silicon/III V laser structures in which a III V quantum well membrane laser is contact-bonded onto the surface of silica on silicon substrates (see Optics Express 30, 32174 (2022)). We have the capability to release these membranes and position them in the integrated photonics cleanroom. The membrane quantum well lasers can provide lasing in-plane as a single laser or an array of coherent lasers without the use of an external cavity. They show the potential to be integrated with silicon photonics as the light source. Here we want to combine these laser sources with meta-surfaces. Meta-surfaces, harnessing subwavelength 2D nanostructures, commonly referred to as meta-atoms, arranged in either a periodic or aperiodic fashion, have garnered growing interest for their extraordinary ability to control light in both classical and quantum light (see Nature Photonics 15, 327 (2021)).
Around 70% of Europe’s offshore wind turbines are installed in the North Sea. Chalk, a calcareous weak rock, is widely present in this area. Driven piles are currently the preferred foundation system for these structures, but pile design entails a high level of uncertainty. Our recent collaborative work on helical (‘screw’) piles has indicated their potential suitability for these highly challenging offshore applications. The relative ease of installation of screw piles at depth may offer a much more convenient method for anchoring wind turbine foundation systems. This can potentially reduce the cost of offshore renewables, accelerate the rate of infrastructure deployment, and significantly contribute towards meeting energy decarbonisation targets.