BOC Gases Postgraduate Bursary Award 2025 Winner – Rajvinder Kaur
The 2025 BOC Postgraduate Bursary was awarded to Tyndall PhD student Rajvinder Kaur.
The award was presented to Rajvinder by Tommy Moore, BOC Gases, and Professor William Scanlon CEO, Tyndall.
BOC Gases is the largest supplier of industrial gases, speciality gases and gas equipment in Ireland, and the BOC Postgraduate Bursary is presented annually to outstanding Tyndall students.
Rajvinder Kaur’s Research
Thermal management is a growing challenge in modern miniaturised photonic systems, driven by increasing integration density.
As photonic chips, used in applications such as high-speed internet and advanced computing, get smaller and more complex, they also get hotter. This heat can interfere with how the chips work, especially when it causes tiny shifts in the light signals, they use.
Rajvinder has developed a micro-thermoelectric cooler (micro-TEC), which is a tiny device that can be placed directly on heat-sensitive parts of the chip to keep them cool. These coolers are made using special thin film materials and shaped to maximize their cooling power.
Rajvinder uses a method called electrodeposition to fine-tune the materials for better thermoelectric efficiency, and she ran computer simulations to design the best shape for the cooler. The final version of micro-TEC, consisting of materials shaped like the Greek letter π (pi), was built using standard chip-making tools and successfully showed it could cool specific areas.
This cooling technology could help manage heat, not just in photonic chips, but also in powerful computers, smart vehicles, and future wearable devices.
All Tyndall Masters and PhD students, supervised by Tyndall staff or Tyndall academic members, whose research involves the institute and is beyond their first year of study, are eligible to apply. Applications for the annual BOC Gases Bursary are awarded on the basis of research accomplishments and promise for the future.
Congratulations to Rajvinder Kaur!
