This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: New research led by the ARC Center of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS) at the University of Melbourne demonstrates a new way to make invisible infrared light visible without relying on the expensive detector technology used in today's infrared cameras. Infrared is a type of light our eyes can't see, but it carries information about heat and objects in the environment.
It is widely used for environmental monitoring, industrial inspection, medicine and security. However, technologies such as infrared cameras remain expensive because they rely on specialized detectors that are costly to manufacture and often require cooling. The international team of researchers demonstrated a new way to see infrared light that could one day make these systems smaller, lighter and far less expensive.
The study is published in the journal Light: Science & Applications. Nima Sefidmooye Azar completed the work while at TMOS at the University of Melbourne. Now based at the University of Queensland, Azar says the team developed an optical screen—a "metasurface"—covered in tiny structures thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair.
The screen converts invisible infrared light directly into visible light while making the converted image more than 1,000 times brighter. It works by controlling how light behaves, concentrating invisible infrared light where it is needed to make the image brighter. "Infrared imaging has enormous potential, but today's cameras generally depend on expensive semiconductor detectors," says Azar.
"Our platform offers a completely different approach by converting infrared images into visible ones using a compact optical screen," he says. The researchers coated the patterned surface with tiny particles made of rare-earth materials. These particles absorb infrared light and re-emit it as visible light.
The metasurface was engineered to trap and concentrate incoming infrared light, dramatically strengthening the interaction between light and the nanoparticles. The approach made the converted images more than 1,000 times brighter than nanoparticles could achieve on their own. Co-author Kenneth Crozier, a professor at TMOS at the University of Melbourne, says the biggest challenge was that making the image brighter often made it blurrier.
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