This scholarships is part funded by the Welsh Government’s European Social Fund (ESF) convergence programme for West Wales and the Valleys.
Start date: October 2019
The Nightingale Ltd. has developed a system for measuring thin films and coatings using proprietary technologies called Beam Profile Reflectometry (BPR) and Beam Profile Ellipsometry (BPE). The underlying technology, which works by analysing the profile of a reflected laser beam, was developed in the semiconductor industry in the 1990s, but only used in that industry on perfectly flat and smooth surfaces. Nightingale-EOS has shown how the technology can be extended for use on tilted, curved and rough surfaces, and has identified many potential uses in the medical device, pharmaceutical and engineering industries.
The current hardware is affected by sources of noise which make its measurements insufficiently stable for production use in a commercial environment. This objective of this project is to identify the sources of noise and the development of suitable mitigation for them. This will require the generation of a quantity of raw data from which noise patterns can be identified and correlated with external factors. This will require the collection and statistical analysis of data, including the condition of the measurement system and its environment, as well as the measurement data pertaining to various different types of sample-under-test. The project will also include predictive mathematical modelling, in order to test hypotheses about the behaviour of the apparatus and compare modelled predictions with the results of subsequent measurements.
Scholarships are collaborative awards with external partners including SMEs and micro companies, as well as public and third sector organisations. The scholarship provides 1 year funding with a 3 month period to complete the thesis. The achievement of a postgraduate skills development award, PSDA, is compulsory for each KESS II scholar and is based on a 40 credit award.