Congratulations to the winners of the STS Elionix Scientific Image competition, Q4 2022!
The STS Elionix Scientific Image competition allows us to showcase the creative side of the researchers here at Tyndall. They share scientific images from their research which they have discovered to be visually striking or informative to the technically excellent.
The judges for the Q4 competition were Prof. William Scanlon, CEO; Peter Smyth, Commercial Director; Ursula Morrish, Marketing & Communications Manager; Graeme Maxwell, Head of Specialty Products & Services; and Dr Daniela Iacopino, Researcher, MNS.
The exceptional quality and creativity led to the votes being cast to the following three images: Xing Ouyang for Samsara – The Wheel of All Life. Nikolay Petkov, Ray Duffy, Sinan Bugu & Giorgos Fagas for GeSn Coral Beach and GeSn Wild Roses.
The winners are awarded a €100 Me2You Gift Card for each image, kindly sponsored by STS Elionix.
Samsara – The Wheel of Life
Xing Ouyang, Photonic Systems Group
This image captures the modulated radio frequency signals, processed by digital filters at the transmitter in the form of a two-dimension constellation diagram.
These signals are called quadrature amplitude modulation that impress digital signals of 0s and 1s onto the amplitude and phase of radio frequency signals. They are widely used in our 5G mobile networks, Wi-Fi and fiber-optic systems for broadband communications. The amplitude and phase-modulated signals in the picture use 16 fixed 2-D points to encode 4 bits of information, which mean each point in the picture represent 4 bits of information, with millions of bits here.
The signal is swirling because the signal is distorted by the linear filtering effect in both amplitude and phase. The result is an image similar to the concept of Saṃsāra, meaning "cyclicality of all life, matter and existence".
.
GeSn Coral Beach and GeSn Wild Roses
Nikolay Petkov, Ray Duffy, Sinan Bugu & Giorgos Fagas, CMOS++
Both of these Scanning Electron Microscope images (GeSn Coral Beach and GeSn Wild Roses) are related to a collaborative Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) project at Tyndall National Institute.
This project is aiming at the demonstration of the first operational GeSn quantum devices, capitalising on unique material band structure properties, which place GeSn on the roadmap for future quantum computing and information processing technologies.
Under irradiation by a focussed ion beam, the GeSn surface morphology becomes highly textured, related to crystal damage accumulation in the underlying substrate.
