Facilitating collaboration between the five different nodes of TMOS is one of the Centre’s key priorities, which is why the Cross-Node Exchange Award was designed.

ANU-based Fedor Kovalev was one of the applicants chosen to participate, and he travelled to UWA to work with the team there. Not only did he learn the details of the fabrication process and its challenges, he also had the opportunity to check the setup for measurements of metasurface characteristics.

“I believe that the Cross-Node Exchange Awards can improve the quality of our research and solve many different problems that cannot be done remotely,” said Fedor.

This was evidenced when he found limited accuracy with the setup for measurements of metasurface characteristics. From his visit to UWA, they were able to improve the system to ensure precise measurements of samples in the future. 

“The current setup for the measurements wasn’t perfect, since the accuracy of measurements of the transmission characteristics is quite low. I discussed this setup with our collaborators from UWA and we developed proposals for improving this setup, so we can have better accuracy for our measurements of the complete metasurface structure with MEMS later,” Fedor said.

“It’s great to communicate with collaborators not only online but in person, because it helps you to maintain friendly relations between teams in different nodes.” 

In addition to learning the full cycle of the metasurface fabrication process and measuring the characteristics of fabricated samples without microelectromechanical systems, Fedor attended a seminar at the School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering. Here, he presented the results of his research and found the feedback he received and the discussion opportunities with his colleagues to be highly beneficial.

“We’re planning a publication based on the conducted research after the successful fabrication of the metasurface with MEMS and measurements of their characteristics,” Fedor continued. “I also proposed a possible design for tunable terahertz filters based on toroidal metasurfaces and MEMS, so it’s possible to work on this collaborative project in the future.”

To be considered for the Cross-Node Exchange Award, applicants must send an outline of the collaboration they are interested in. TMOS will then assist successful applicants financially with flights and accommodation.