Photonics Enabled Terahertz Spectroscopy for Air Pollution Monitoring and Climate Change Studies

由于空气污染和温室气体(GHGs)对人类健康、气候和整个生态系统的有害影响，大城市地区日益增加的空气污染和温室气体(GHGs)的排放水平已成为全球关注的重大问题。为了降低排放水平，已经制定了缓解战略，然而，为了评估这些缓解措施的有效性，第一步将是通过部署高密度和高精度的传感器网络来改善空气质量监测网络，以准确地实时捕捉空间变异性和排放热点。传统的、更准确的空气质量监测仪器体积大、复杂、成本高，因此只能在少数几个地点提供准确数据，不能提供足够的信息来保护人口健康或准确评估缓解战略。过去十年中出现的低成本传感器使高空间分辨率的实时观测成为可能，然而，由于它们的选择性较差，它们的测量数据高度依赖于大气组成，还取决于气象条件，即这些平台产生的数据质量较差。在这项合作中，我将为下一代空气质量监测网络开发第一个基于光子集成电路(PIC)的低成本高精度空气污染监测仪。光子集成允许在单个芯片上制造数百个光子组件，这一技术进步将提供一种低成本、片上、多功能仪器，稳定到计量精度，可以部署在高密度网络中，以高空间和时间分辨率准确监测工业城市内的各种污染物。采集到的数据可以通过现有的移动网络传输到云服务器上，用户可以随时随地轻松地进行高精度的空气质量监测。拟议的仪器还可以部署在气球和卫星飞行任务中，用于现场探测高层大气的成分，帮助研究复杂的大气过程，以了解其对气候变化的影响。EPSRC开放奖学金将使我能够巩固我多年来在工业界和学术界积累的专业知识，并获得我的研究独立性。在这五年中，我将领导一个由3-5名研究人员组成的团队，并将加强我在新型光子集成解决方案方面的研究成果，以应对当今面临的挑战。这将有助于我在申请传统补助金时更具竞争力，以扩大我的研究组合和研究团队，并成为该研究领域的领导者。在10年内，我的愿景是将光子集成技术应用于更广泛的应用，包括医学成像、材料科学和无损检测，并为研究型学生和早期职业研究人员提供出色的培训机会，他们将成长为英国未来科学和工程领域的学术和工业领导者。

Increasing emission levels of air pollution and greenhouse gases (GHGs) in large urban areas have become a great global concern due to their detrimental impact on human health, climate and the entire ecosystem. In order to cut emission levels, mitigation strategies are in place, however, to evaluate the effectiveness of these mitigation measures, the first step will be to improve the air quality (AQ) monitoring networks by deploying high density and high precision sensor networks to accurately capture spatial variability and emission hotspots in real-time. The traditional and more accurate air quality monitoring instrumentation are large, complex and costly, and hence are only sparsely deployed which provide accurate data but only in few locations, not providing enough information to protect the health of the population or to accurately evaluate the mitigation strategies. The emergence of low-cost sensors (LCS) within the last decade enabled observations at high spatial resolution in real-time, however, due to their poor selectivity, their measurement data is highly dependent on atmospheric composition, and also on meteorological conditions that the data generated by these platforms are of poor quality. In this fellowship, I will develop the first low-cost and high precision air pollution monitor based on photonic integrated circuits (PICs) for the next generation air quality monitoring networks. Photonic integration allows hundreds of photonic components to be fabricated on a single chip, and this step-change in technology will deliver a low-cost, on-chip, versatile instrumentation, stabilised to metrological precision that can be deployed in high density networks to accurately monitor a wide range of pollutants within industrial cities with high spatial and temporal resolution. The captured data can be transferred to the cloud servers over the existing mobile networks from which the users can easily monitor air quality with high accuracy at any time and from anywhere. The proposed instrumentation can also be deployed in balloon and satellite missions for in-situ probing of the constituents of the upper atmosphere, aiding the study of complex atmospheric processes to understand its influence on climate change. EPSRC Open Fellowship will enable me to consolidate my expertise gained over the years in industry and academia and gain my research independence. During these five years, I will have established myself to lead a team of 3 -5 researchers and will have enhanced my research output in novel photonic integrated solutions to combat the challenges faced today. This will aid me to be more competitive in applying for traditional Grants to extend my research portfolio and my research team, and become a leader in this field of research. In 10 years, my vision will be to exploit photonic integration technology for wider applications, including medical imaging, material science and non-destructive testing, and provide outstanding training opportunities to research students and early career researchers who will grow to be future academic and industrial leaders in science and engineering in the UK.