Bay Photonics joins industrial initiative on mid-IR sensing innovation to detect greenhouse gases
Bay Photonics recently joined forces with quantum sensing start-up QLM and control electronics specialist, Redwave Labs, in the Innovate UK funded gas sensing project, Q3MD. As part of the project, Bay Photonics will be developing hermetically sealed TO packages able to cool the detector chips to below -50C.
For the UK to reach a zero-carbon economy, the measurement, regulation, and enforcement of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions needs to rapidly expand. Natural gas (primarily CH4, methane) remains the dominant fossil fuel and industrial leaks are a leading source of GHGs, causing global warming.
The majority of GHGs can be detected in the Mid-IR (>3μm) at much lower concentrations than at Short-wave-IR wavelengths commonly used in current commercial detector systems (operating in the range 1.5μm-1.7μm). The Q3MD project brings together three innovative SMEs to develop a quantum single photon sensitive detector for methane gas detection operating at 3μm.
Bay Photonics will optimize solid state cooling to bring the detector to very low temperatures without having recourse to Stirling engines. Moreover, thanking to recent acquisition of a projection welder (see images) above, Bay will provide automated hermetic sealing of the Mid-IR detectors in a controlled atmosphere for highly reliable and efficient operation in adverse weather conditions.
Bay Photonics will be attending the up-coming Photonics West Exhibition in San Francisco from Tue 31st Jan -Thu 2nd Feb and our CTO, Dr Andrew Robertson will be located at Booth 5129, the Electronics & Photonics Innovation Centre (EPIC) stand.
About Bay Photonics – Bay Photonics have been providing photonic packaging solutions since 2007 and have experience in hermetic packaging of photonic components such as laser die, detectors, and PICS. Bay are also experts in development and building small, robustly packaged micro-optic and optical fiber based photonic modules and lasers. Bay Photonics are located within the Electronics & Photonics Innovation Centre (EPIC), Paignton, Devon
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