TECHNICALLY SPEAKING

After coming to the UK from Iran in 2000 – and joining the University in 2001 – Dr Mehdi Banakar is now a key player in the University’s silicon photonics rapid prototyping foundry CORNERSTONE.

CORNERSTONE is a facility offering a prototyping service to researchers, both academic and industrial, fabricating silicon photonics circuits for a wide range of applications including data centres for the internet, lab-on-a-chip medical sensors and LiDAR technology for driverless cars.

The Optoelectronics Research Centre, which hosts CORNERSTONE, is one of the best of its kind in the UK – and it is this claim to fame, along with the expertise honed at Southampton, that has kept Mehdi at the University.

He said: “I like the technical side, and I like the fact that the applications for photonics are helping in a wide range of areas, such as highperformance computing, sensors, and data centres. What we’re doing and developing is helping to bring good to society and making a difference.”

Just 12 months after arriving in the UK to study at Weymouth College, Mehdi joined the University of Southampton.

He embarked on a foundation year in 2001 and continued at the University to complete his Bachelor’s degree and then his Master’s in Microsystem Design, in the School of Electronics and Computer Science, in 2008.

He began to hone his fabrication skills during his part-time Master’s studies when he also worked as a research assistant, helping to fabricate designs for PhD students and researchers.

Mehdi’s PhD focused on harnessing solar power. He explained: “I was looking at submicron texturing for photovoltaic antireflection and light trapping. I was working on solar panels, trying to increase their efficiency. One way to do that is through light trapping, or absorbing more light through the surface by texturing the surface of the panel. Some of the ideas I worked with came from nature, such as butterflies’ wings, which are naturally designed to absorb light.”

In 2015, Mehdi joined the Silicon Photonics Group where he made the most of his fabrication skills.

“I enjoy silicon photonics and working with light,” he said. “There are lots of applications for silicon photonics, but the dominant one at the moment is transceivers used in data centres – transferring data day-to-day as part of the world wide web. The beauty of it is that it makes things so much faster – you can send messages, pictures and data so much faster – and, perhaps even more importantly given the climate crisis, whilst consuming far less energy than electronics counterparts.”

Since 2019, Mehdi has been a Technical Manager within CORNERSTONE, where he is helping researchers to bring the future closer with silicon photonics.

Find out more www.cornerstone.sotonfab.co.uk