Mid Infrared Supercontinuum Source for Fibre Characterisation

Tender description

The University of Southampton is one of the UK's leading research institutions and is in the top 1 per cent of universities worldwide. There are currently in excess of 22,000 students on campus in the UK. Using conventional business metrics, the University is a large enterprise with an annual turnover of £500m and a staff establishment in excess of 5,000 FTE. Through world-leading research and enterprise activities, the University of Southampton connects with businesses to create real-world solutions to global issues. Through its educational offering, it works with partners around the globe to offer a world-class education. This connectivity is key to Southampton's offering and market presence. Further information can be found at http://www.southampton.ac.uk/ The Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) is one of the world's leading institutes for photonics research, based in the Zepler Institute for Photonics and Nanoelectronics, at the University of Southampton. This procurement is for the hollow core fibre group, which works within the ORC. Our research focusses on the fabrication, characterisation and applications of hollow core fibres; these are a relatively recent development in specialty optical fibres and we have several large research programmes dedicated to this work. One of the advantages of hollow core fibres is that they can be designed to operate beyond the spectral transmission window of more conventional, all-silica fibres. This includes transmission into the mid-infrared. Over recent years, we have made many mid-infrared guiding hollow core fibres but we struggle to characterise them as we have much more limited characterisation equipment for this spectral range. However, the mid-infrared is a growing research area and new optical sources and detectors are becoming available which would help us with characterisation. Recently, we secured funding to purchase some of this equipment, including a mid-infrared supercontinuum source (the focus of this procurement). This would be used as a light source to characterise our hollow core fibres. The project is for the supply of a Mid-Infrared Supercontinuum. As mentioned above, this is a light source and we would use the output light and couple it into our hollow core fibres and use it to measure the optical properties of our fibres, such as attenuation and bend loss. We do not have any commercial mid-infrared supercontinuum sources within the ORC but have experience of using similar sources at near-infrared wavelengths. The key advantages for us in purchasing a mid-infrared supercontinuum would be: broad spectral range, high power spectral density, good output power stability and turn-key operation. All proposals should include delivery of the system, training, operating manuals, commissioning, successful user acceptance testing and at least a 12-month warranty with an option to extend the warranty subject to agreement by the University.