Progress Summary

Highlights of the year include:

New Funding

• Major funding won for a wind energy Doctoral Training Centre (£5.7M)
• EU funding won for novel thermoelectric device technologies
• EU JePPIX funding won for novel Semiconductor Optical Amplifier devices

New & Improved Research Facilities

• Extension of the capabilities of the solar array test facility
• New laboratory facilities for power system protection and control research established
• Plasma polymerisation system installed and commissioned

Research progress and outcomes

• Development of research on thermo-electric devices for heat pumping and energy scavenging including funding from Doosan Babcock to study both schemes in carbon capture and storage thermal power stations
• Successful demonstration of OCDM using GRPE fabricated devices and the GU-SU test fibre network
• International collaboration with OKI and the National Research Council of Canada
• Exploration of Passive Optical Network architectures
• First low-voltage polymer transistors fabricated using vacuum deposited films; facilities installed to purify organic semiconductor materials