Our vision is to deliver a chip-scale two-photon Rb optical atomic clock, frequency reference and low phase-noise oscillator by combining narrow linewidth lasers using III-V gain chips with silicon nitride external gratings locked to integrated Rb MEMS cells and down-converted to a 10 GHz output signal using a silicon nitride microring frequency comb driven by a III-V pulsed, mode-locked laser. A silicon nitride photonic integrated circuit (PIC) platform will be used for the heterogeneous integrated of all the photonic and MEMS vacuum components required for the timing systems. An analogy is Harrison's pocket watch, H4, that won the Longitude Prize in 1773 as the small size reduced the uncertainties from temperature and acceleration drifts on navy ships. Through comparison with the literature and back of the envelope calculations we estimate a performance of 100 fs/(Hz^0.5) and 1 fs accuracy for the proposed clock with a physics package of around 40 x 30 x 5 mm in size. This corresponds to an uncertainty of 2 ns after the Blackett review 72 hour hold-over period requirement for critical national infrastructure. For a position uncertainty where only timing errors dominate, this results in a position uncertainty < 1 m. Our aim is for a clock with comparable performance to a Microchip MHM-2020 Active Hydrogen Maser but x10,000 smaller, x250 lower mass and x150 lower power. Active hydrogen masers are 100 times more stable than Cs atomic clocks at measuring times of 7 days and x100,000 more accurate at 1 day than a commercial CSAC (Chip Scale Atomic Clock).

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

The THz part of the electromagnetic spectrum has a number of potential applications which include oncology (skin cancer imaging), security imaging, THz bandwidth photonics, production monitoring and astronomy. The U.K. has been one of the pioneering countries in THz research but also in the exploitation of the technology with a number of companies including TeraView, QMC Instruments and Thruvision. At present most commercial imaging and spectroscopy systems use expensive femtosecond lasers with photoconductive antenna which fundamentally limits the power output to the microWatt level. Virtually all the applications referenced above require room temperature sources with over 10 mW of output power if parallel, fast, high performance imaging and/or spectroscopy systems are to be developed.While interband recombination of electrons and holes in Si and Ge are inefficient due to the indirect bandgap of the semiconductors, intersubband transitions provide an alternative path to a laser for low energy radiation such as THz frequencies. Intersubband unipolar lasers in the form of quantum cascade lasers have been demonstrated using III-V materials. Powers up to 248 mW at 10 K have been demonstrated at THz frequencies but due to polar optical phonon scattering and the associated reduction in intersubband lifetimes as the temperature is increased, such devices only operate at cryogenic temperatures. Previous work has been undertaken on p-type Si/SiGe quantum cascade lasers but due to large non-parabolicity and large effective mass (0.3 to 0.4 m_0) in the valence band, significant gain above 10 cm^-1 is difficult to engineer.In this proposal, we propose to use pure Ge quantum well designs and L-valley electrons for the first experimental demonstration of a n-type Si-based quantum cascade laser grown on top of a Si substrate. We demonstrate that the low effective of 0.118 m_0 and long non-polar lifetimes in the Ge/SiGe system potentially provide gain close to values demonstrated in GaAs THz quantum cascade lasers at 4 K and also potentially allow 300 K operation. Further the cheap and mature available Si process technology will allow at least a x100 reduction in the cost of THz quantum cascade lasers compared to GaAs devices. Such devices could be further developed into vertical cavity emitters (i.e. VCSELs) for parallel imaging applications or integrated with Si photonics to allow THz bandwidth telecoms. Finally we propose optically pumped structures which have the potential for broadband tunability, higher output powers and higher operating temperatures than THz quantum cascade lasers.This programme has brought together the modelling and design toolsets at Leeds University with the CVD growth expertise at Warwick University combined with the fabrication and measurement expertise of SiGe devices at Glasgow University to deliver internationally leading research. We have a number of industrial partners (AdvanceSis, Kelvin Nanotechnology and TeraView) who provide direct exploitation paths for the research. Successful room temperature quantum cascade lasers are an enabling technology for many new markets for THz applications including oncology (skin cancer imaging), security imaging, production monitoring, proteomics, drug discovery and astronomy.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Flash memories are used to store phone numbers, music, pictures and videos in mobile phones and are also frequently now used in place of magnetic hard disks in laptop computers. Such memories are non-volatile retaining information even if a battery looses all charge. Consumers constantly want more memory on their portable electronic devices to allow more video and music to be stored but flash memory is already close to the scaling limits preventing significant increases to memory sizes in the future. A flash memory consists of a floating gate charge node where the a single bit of digital information is stored as a "1" when the node is charged and "0" when the node is discharged. As the floating gate is reduced in size, there are more errors when electrons leak out of or onto the floating gate. These errors result from variation in floating gate size by just a few atomic layers which are sufficient to substantially change the applied voltage required to tunnel electrons onto or off the floating gate. This limit has been reached with present production. Our approach to improve flash memory and allow smaller memories is to use molecules which are produced chemically to allow charges to be stored as the digital memory and as the molecules are all identical, they do not suffer the same variability errors as the present silicon floating gate flash memories. Out ultimate aim is to use single molecules to enable further scaling thereby aiming to increase the amount of memory available in the future. We will also investigate molecules that can store more than "0" and "1" known as multi-valued memory. This multi-valued memory approach allows more bits to be stored on a single floating gate thereby allowing higher memory density expanding further what could be stored on a mobile phone or laptop computer. The approach we are taking requires the ability to measure the state an electron occupies on a single molecule. Therefore the technique developed here could be used to measure the properties of single molecules. This has potential applications for measuring the electronic properties of single molecules directly allowing the full characterisation of the molecular levels which at present is difficult to achieve. We believe these techniques can benefit a wide range of researchers in chemistry, physics, materials science and engineering in achieving far cheaper characterisation of materials at the nanoscale.