The core of the scientific work is performed in WP1-4, while WP5 covers the network-wide and transferable skills training, career development, WP6 covers the project management, recruitment, dissemination and outreach, and WP7 covers ethics requirements.
All achieved specific Research Objectives in MOCCA are listed below:
RO1. Design, fabrication (CO2 laser annealing and/or femtosecond laser inscription), theoretical and experimental characterisation of wideband OFCs with low frequency and equidistant spectrum (of 100 MHz distance between lines) based on Aston SNAP bottle resonators 5 6 7
RO2. Design, fabrication, theoretical and experimental characterisation of wideband OFCs with low frequency and equidistant spectrum (200 GHz distance between lines) based on Thales photonic crystal platform.
RO3. Simulation, design and development of OFC devices based on pioneering work by AMO by utilizing surface modification techniques and/or strain to increase nonlinear optical effects in silicon photonic structures.
RO4. Design, fabrication, theoretical and experimental characterization of ultralow power threshold microresonator OFC sources based on C2N and III-V Labs new nonlinear semiconductor platforms.
RO5. Development and proof-of-concept tests of the dual comb spectrometers based on different combinations of the microresonators (Aston) and microcavities (Thales) with an active fibre cavity.
RO6. Theoretical characterisation of the dynamics and the phase noise of the comb OFC source developed in Aston and Thales.
The consortium organised 12 scientific training events, 3 Transferable Skills Training Workshops and 4 Annual Project Network Meetings. All ESRs prepared their career development plans (CDP) in the beginning of the project, and regularly updated it during their studies. Closer to the end of MOCCA they prepared a final CDP with short-term and long-term goals.
In the management WP6 the full cohort of ESR has been recruited and maintained throughout the project, all ESRs completing their secondments to industrial/academic partners. ESR3, Francesco Talenti, awarded his PhD degree on 10th January 2023.
The extensive project website has been built and will be maintained for at least 2 years after the project ends. The project has a presence of several social media platforms, generating over 100,000 impressions, and attracting influential followers to the account. In total 11 management meeting took place at regular intervals.
MOCCA ESRs planned and delivered a myriad of outreach and public engagement activities reaching all sectors of society. They visited both primary and secondary schools to enthuse young mines about photonic sciences. ESRs engaged with industry during secondments but also by attending trade fairs, where they represented MOCCA and its research. MOCCA produced brochures, pamphlets, posters, etc and ran live events with different target audiences. To disseminate their research, the 4 ESRs in MOCCA contributed published 8 peer reviewed journal papers, gave 10 peer-reviewed conference presentations, prepared 5 conference posters, and submitted 12 scientific deliverables, all of which are open access.
