New research at the University of Maryland could lead to a generation of light detectors that can see below the surface of bodies, walls, and other objects.
Using the special properties of graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon that is only one atom thick, a prototype detector is able to see an extraordinarily broad band of wavelengths. Included in this range is a band of light wavelengths that have exciting potential applications but are notoriously difficult to detect: terahertz waves, which are invisible to the human eye.
There’s a certain part of the light spectrum that if you harness it, would allow you to see through walls and even through skin. It’s known as the terahertz radiation spectrum — or T-rays — and it falls between infrared and microwave.
Detecting those tiny wavelength, sub-millimeter to be exact, has been a huge challenge. T-ray detectors typically need to be kept at extremely cold temperatures, as low as -452 degrees Fahrenheit. Unpractical for field applications, to say the least.
But now a group of researchers from the University of Maryland has used graphene — an atom-thick sheet of carbon — as a sensor that can detect T-rays at room temperature.
Because the graphene detector can be made fairly easily, the researchers think arrays of detector pixels could be amassed into lenses in night-vision goggles that could see through walls or through clothing, the way that airport scanners do.
For more details visit: https://cmns.umd.edu/
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