Professor Dr Malte Gather and Dr Julian Butscher, Dr Florian Le Roux and Dr Andreas Mischok from his research team have received a ‘Proof of Concept’ grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for their research project SPLiDAR. Gather is head of the Humboldt Centre for Nano- and Biophotonics (HCNB) at the University of Cologne’s Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. This funding line aims at exploring the commercial or social potential of an ongoing or completed ERC-funded project. The Proof of Concept grant amounts to a lump sum of 150,000 euros.

SPLiDAR builds on the research results that emerged from Malte Gather’s HyAngle project, for which he received an ERC Advanced Grant. It explores the commercialization possibilities of the spectral filters developed at the HCNB. These novel thin-film filters exhibit unrivaled angular stability and can be used in a wide range of optical and sensor applications, including light detection and ranging (lidar).

Lidar is a method for three-dimensional imaging that uses laser scanning to accurately map the environment. It is used particularly widely in optical sensors for robotics, for analyzing the atmosphere, but also in the field of driver assistance systems and autonomous driving in the automotive industry. In order for lidar measurements to be accurate, the laser light used must be detected over a large field of view and thus over a large range of angles without other sources of interference, such as sunlight or room lighting. Currently available laser filters have limited capability to supress this type of interference as their performance decreases significantly at large angles of incidence.

The team at the HCNB has developed novel spectral filters that utilize the quantum mechanical principle of strong light-matter interaction. These spectral filters can retain their properties over large angular distances, which is not possible for conventional thin-film filters due to fundamental physical principles. In addition to a wide range of other applications, such as in micro-optics and biophotonics, these filters will now be further developed and optimized for use in lidar systems. In addition to their filter capability, stability and durability under real-life conditions are also important.

Further reading: Overcoming the fundamental dispersion limit of optical interference – Alexander von Humboldt Professor Malte Gather at the University of Cologne receives 2.5 million euros funding from the European Research Council (ERC) over five years, wileyindustrynews.com, 25 April 2023