Roel Baets - MIRASPEC

Roel Baets is full professor at Ghent University (UGent) and is associated with IMEC. He received an MSc degree in Electrical Engineering from UGent in 1980 and a second MSc degree from Stanford in 1981. He received a PhD degree from UGent in 1984. From 1984 till 1989 he held a postdoctoral position at IMEC. Since 1989 he has been a professor in the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture of UGent where he founded the Photonics Research Group. From 1990 till 1994 he has also been a part-time professor at Delft University of Technology and from 2004 till 2008 at Eindhoven University of Technology.
MIRASPEC Roel Baets
Roel Baets has mainly worked in the field of integrated photonics. He has made contributions to research on photonic integrated circuits, both in III-V semiconductors and in silicon, as well as their applications in telecom, datacom, sensing and medicine. Web of Science reports over 600 publications with an h-index over 60.

As part of a team of 8 professors Roel Baets leads the Photonics Research Group. With about 90 researchers this group is involved in numerous (inter)national research programs and has created four spin-off companies. The silicon photonics activities of the group are part of a joint research initiative with IMEC.
Roel Baets has led major research projects in silicon photonics in Europe. In 2006 he founded ePIXfab, the globally first Multi-Project-Wafer service for silicon photonics. Since then ePIXfab has evolved to become the European Silicon Photonics Alliance. Roel Baets is also director of the multidisciplinary Center for Nano- and Biophotonics (NB Photonics) at UGent, founded in 2010. He was co-founder of the European MSc programme in Photonics.

Roel Baets is an ERC grantee of the European Research Council and a Methusalem grantee of the Flemish government. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, of the European Optical Society (EOS) and of the Optical Society (OSA). He is also a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts.

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Miniature on-chip Raman spectrometer for personal volatile organic compound (VOC) monitoring - MIRASPEC

MIRASPEC foto onderzoek

In this project we develop the smallest and most lightweight Raman spectrometer in the world, with a target size of 5x10x1 mm3 and a weight of only 0.1 g.

The innovation builds on the combination of three key results of the ERC Advanced Grant project InSpectra (2011-2017): 1. Demonstration of Nanophotonic waveguide Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (NERS); 2. Demonstration of a novel on-chip Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS); 3. Demonstration of the integration of III-V light sources on a silicon platform through bonding or transfer printing technologies. By using a standard CMOS process toolset for fabricating the Raman spectrometer, a cost-effective and high yield product can be guaranteed with a price level at least an order of magnitude lower than current commercial systems. The exceptional form factor of the spectrometer will generate a rich variety of innovative applications of Raman spectroscopy. A spectrometer this small can be implanted, incorporated in smartphones or smartwatches and fits into textiles, drones etc. In this ERC PoC project, we will build this miniature spectrometer and use it for the target application of detecting volatile organic compounds (VOC) for personal safety monitoring, both at work and at home.