ProfessorSimon Fleming

Over the last several decades photonics has revolutionised telecommunications - not only the internet, but mobile telephony, would not exist in anything like their current forms, without the huge bandwidth unleashed by the deployment of optical fibre technology / photonics. Simon Fleming chose a PhD topic involving the first generation of high capacity fibres, and has been an active researcher in this field ever since.

Simon's research interests in photonics span both the underlying science, such as the materials and structures and their fabrication and characterisation, and the applications of the technology. His more fundamental areas of recent and current interest are in metamaterials and poling. His application research interests have diversified as telecommunications photonics have matured. In particular he is interested in how the technological innovations developed in the telecommunications revolution can be applied to other important areas such as biomedicine, energy and advanced manufacturing.

Whilst collaboratively involved in a range of projects, his own reasearch focusses on poling, optical fibre made from low Young's modulus material, and their application to biomedicine.

Poling is the field-assisted modification of the properties of a material. The main focus of this research has been to induce a second-order non-linearity in glass to permit electro-optic modulation, second harmonic generation and entangled photon generation. All of these important effects have been demonstrated in the laboratory. However, the research focus is currently on increasing the effect sufficiently to enable fibre and waveguide devices which will have a real-world technological impact. Simon Fleming has made a series of significant contributions to this field, especially in elucidating the mechanism involved. His current focus is revisiting the extraordinary, but poorly understood, topic of UV Poling.

Low Young's Modulus Optical Fibre offer extraodinary properties and the potential for disruptive devices. Most optical fibres are made from hard matertials such as silica glass or PMMA (Perspex). Materials such as polyurethane have Young's moduli up to six orders of magnitude lower, and can be used to make fibres where the light guidance is extraordinarily sensitive to external perturbations. This opens up possibilities for sensors and modulators with unparalled performance. The challenge revolves around refining the fabrication of fibres from these materials, as the standard drawing approaches are hard to apply.

Biophotonics is an exciting area that seeks biomedical applications of photonic and optical fibre technology. Past projects have included fibre-optic dosimetry for radiation treatment of cancer, laser detection of the early stages of dental caries, multimodal (optical and electrical) neural interfaces, in-vivo fibre sensors for tissue identification and fibre scaffolds for tissue regeneration. Current research focuses on wearables based on novel fibres.

Simon's research aligns with the Faculty of Science Research Strengths - Communication Technologies, Quantum Frontiers.