Prestigious IET Award for DPhil student in Engineering

31 July 2019

IET Award for 3D printing technique which uses lasers to build photonic microstructures out of liquid crystal materials

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John Sandford O’Neill has been announced as the recipient of an Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Postgraduate Award – a highly competitive national scheme which rewards the most innovative, high-impact research currently being undertaken by PhD students around the UK.

The judges were impressed by the real-world potential of his research, which uses lasers to 3D print at the micro scale and build photonic structures from liquid crystals.

Unlike the large 3D printers that you might be familiar with (which apply layer after layer of plastic to manufacture objects), John’s technique uses laser micro-machining to create microscale polymer structures. Instead of plastic, his ‘resin material’ is liquid crystals - the same thing found in the LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) screen that you’re probably reading from right now.

For more details of the award see here.

Research ares: Materials and Devices, Optical Physics

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