The current night vision glasses and viewers are heavy and bulky and have limitations, such as the need to have a cooling system to avoid interference. Now, a team of MIT Engineers, together with experts from the United States Air Forces, have created A technique for developing ultrafines of electronic material. This method could pave the way for new types of electronic devices, such as ultrafine portable sensors, flexible transistors and computer components, and compact and high sensitivity image devices.
As a demonstration, the equipment manufactured a fine membrane of pyroelectric material, a type of thermosensitive material that produces an electric current in response to temperature changes. The finer the pyroelectric material, the better it will detect the subtle thermal variations.
With this new method, the team manufactured The finest pyroelectric membrane to date, from 10 thick nanometersand demonstrated its high heat sensitivity and radiation in the distant infrared spectrum.
This new film could allow faster, larger, laptop and high precision infrared (IR) detection devices, with possible applications in night vision glasses and autonomous driving in fog conditions. Current far -generation infrared sensors require bulky cooling elements. Instead, The new thin pyroelectric film does not require refrigeration and is sensitive to much lower temperature changes. Researchers are exploring ways to incorporate the film in lighter and more precision night vision glasses.
“This movie considerably reduces weight and cost, making it light, laptop and easier to integrate -Explains Xinyuan Zhang, leader of the study, published in Nature -. For example, it could be taken directly on the glasses. ”
The thermensitive film could also have Applications in environmental and biological detectionas well as in obtaining images of astrophysical phenomena that emit distant infrared radiation. In addition, the new take -off technique can be generalized beyond pyroelectric materials. Researchers plan to apply the method to manufacture other high -performance ultrafine semiconductive films.
To create these devices, Kim’s team has experienced with methods to cultivate and stack semiconductor elements and manufacture ultra -laced and multifunctional electronic membranes of fine film. A kim pioneer method is “remote epitaxia”, A technique in which semiconductor materials are cultivated on a monochronic substrate, with an ultrafine layer of graphene between them.
The crystalline structure of the substrate serves as a scaffold on which the new material can grow. Graphene acts as an non -stringent layer, similar to Teflon, which makes it easier for researchers. After taking off the new film, the underlying substrate can be reused to create additional thin films.
The team started from this premise and made multiple ultrafine films, Each of about 10 nanometers thick. The pyroelectric films took off and transferred them to a small chip to form a matrix. They presented the films to increasingly subtle temperature changes and discovered that the pixels were highly sensitive to small changes in the distant infrared spectrum.
The sensitivity of the pyroelectric set is comparable to that of the latest generation night vision devices. These devices are currently based on photodetector materials. However, the signal can be affected by environmental noise and, to avoid these effects, photodetector must also include cooling devices that lower the temperature of the instruments to that of liquid nitrogen.