CST Global Leads Single Photon LED Project

QR_SPLED project to develop technology for next generation quantum key-based network security

UK III-V foundry CST Global, a subsidiary of Sivers IMA Holding AB, is leading a Government-funded project ‘GaSb/GaAs Quantum Ring Single Photon LED (QR_SPLED’).

QR_SPLED seeks to mass-produce low-cost, single-photon LEDs (SPLEDs); a critical technology step in the development of commercially viable, next generation, intrinsic, network security.

Manus Hayne from the Department of Physics at Lancaster University is the academic partner on the project. He is the recognised world-authority on GaSb/GaAs quantum rings and their use in devices such as telecoms-wavelength, VCSELs.

Thomas Slight (pictured), research engineer at CST Global and project lead, explains: “To successfully produce next generation, secure networks we must first mass-produce low-cost, single-photon, LED sources. They provide two, enabling security elements. The first being that the single photon LED can transmit unique, ‘key exchange’, encryption and decryption data within each data packet, making it impossible to hack. The second being that any attempt to measure, or ‘eavesdrop’, on communications is immediately detected and the communication terminated.”

The QR-SPLED project (ref: EP/P034233/1) is UK government funded through Innovate UK and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), in the framework of the UK National Quantum Technologies Programme, with additional funding expected for developing a packaged, SPLED solution later.

The QR-SPLED project runs from March 2017 until February 2018.