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: When physicists at the ARC Centre for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS) needed a key component for their terahertz experiments, they ran into a frustrating problem—they needed tiny optical devices, known as wire-grid polarizers, but these cost thousands of dollars each. "We were doing experiments in the terahertz frequency range and figured that some of the components—particularly polarizers—were extremely expensive," says Professor Ilya Shadrivov from TMOS at The Australian National University.
He is the co-author of a new study published in Optics and Laser Technology. "So we looked at how they were made and thought, surely there's a way to make them cheaper and faster." Polarizers are essential for controlling terahertz light, which underpins technology that helps see inside or through opaque materials like clothes and packaging—without the cellular damage caused by X-rays. While polarizers are expected to underpin future communications beyond 6G, they are already widely used in spectroscopy, imaging and materials research.
Instead of spending thousands of dollars on these polarizers, the researchers asked if they could simply make one themselves. Using an ordinary sheet of aluminum kitchen foil and a nanosecond laser with precisely controlled pulses, the team found it could carve a delicate metal grid directly from the foil in as little as 15 seconds—without cleanrooms, specialized fabrication facilities or even the decades-old wire-winding techniques that conventional devices require. The idea for the technology was conceived during a TMOS internal 'Shark Tank' competition last year, where researchers were challenged to pitch ideas with commercial potential.
"We started thinking about what we could do that might actually become a product," Shadrivov says. The device design was led by doctoral student Oleg Kameshkov, and the fabrication was done by Dr. Vladlen Shvedov, both also at TMOS at The Australian National University.
"This was just our first experiment with the simplest material, which we then followed with more industry-grade materials, including tungsten," Kameshkov says. "We took just your kitchen aluminum foil and made our polarizer out of it. It costs almost nothing." The technology came to light when the team discovered exactly how to control the laser parameters.
The process is delicate: with too much energy, the microscopic wires buckle. With too little, the foil isn't cut. After months of experimentation, the team found a sweet spot that let it carve microscopic metal grids without destroying them.
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