WORIC researchers developed an innovative blood oxygen monitor after supplies of this key device became limited as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The device has been designed to be manufactured in Wales and breaks away from the standard oximeter supply chains, effectively eliminating future sourcing bottlenecks.
The oximeter device allows clinicians to monitor the level of oxygen in the bloodstream, and, importantly, the performance of their lungs. It also has the potential to be used in community settings, allowing clinicians to remotely assess patients with Covid-19 to monitor the performance of their lungs whilst at home, to determine appropriate and early lifesaving treatment such as CPAP to support breathing.
Welsh Government awarded £83,000 funding to USW under its COVID Research, Development and Innovation Support call to cover the research and development cost for the new design. When MHRA exemption approval is granted, the device will be produced by manufacturers in Wales within a matter of weeks in readiness for any future potential Covid-19 case peaks.
This half-million GBP Carbon Trust project with industrial partner Lomox Ltd aims to deliver more efficient OLED light source with theoretical and experimental research in material and light extraction technology. A home-made OLED component with UV laser lithography nano-gratings was experimentally demonstrated.
WORIC researchers worked closely with Lomox Company and our chemistry department for the component’s characterization by AFM and SEM microscopy. 100-nm level gratings were achieved by optical photoresist coating and laser lithography in gain layer of OLED sandwich structure to extract light efficiently. The highly polarized OLED light extraction with high EQE was also reported in Optics Express (Volume 28; Issue 26; December 2020).
The result of this project led to increasing the efficiency of the light output from OLED by a factor of three, leading to substantial carbon reduction.
The WORIC team worked closely with an industrial consortium (Digital Projection Ltd, Covesion Ltd, Oclaro, and Gooch & Housego) in £2M Innovate UK (DBERR) project of Intra-cavity Frequency Doubling of an Edge-emitting Diode Laser with A Periodically Poled LiNbO3 Crystal.
MgO:LiNbO3 nonlinear crystal material for devices performing nonlinear functions was achieved with high SHG efficiency which can generate green light for display applications.
Our novel results were reported in Optics Letters Volume 34 (2009), and Optic Letters Volume 36 (2011).
Spotlight on Optics OSA said: "The authors of this paper in Optics Letters are actively moving in the direction of engineering of high-brightness compact lasers, integrating an international team, as well as technical advances of modern photonic technologies".
This three-year UKRI-funded project with working closely with NPL intends to develop a new high repetition mode hop free chirped laser that allows major enhancements in a combined multiliteracies (CM) instrument. This research enables additional distance measurements to be carried out at an accuracy of 0.1mm over a distance of 10m. WORIC team worked closely with NPL team using WORIC and their facilities.
The novel results are demonstrated and produced an instrument that greatly simplified manufacturing measurements without compromising accuracy. We also developed a new way for dual laser frequency sweeping interferometry (IEEE Photonics Technology Letters 2015 Jan 19; 27(7):733-6.).
Commercially, this instrument provided enormous added value to the UK's manufacturing such as EADS.
