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Just read a fascinating paper by @tawfiquehasan.bsky.social breaking a fundamental spectrometer trade-off between resolution & sensitivity using metasurfaces. They demonstrated this working in super-challenging conditions - even doing astronomy through clouds!
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adr7155
Just read a fascinating paper by @tawfiquehasan.bsky.social breaking a fundamental spectrometer trade-off between resolution & sensitivity using metasurfaces. They demonstrated this working in super-challenging conditions - even doing astronomy through clouds!
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adr7155
Comments
Here's the clever bit: Traditional spectral sensors block most incoming light (low throughput). These researchers instead used "bandstop" metasurfaces with bound states in continuum (BIC).
The BIC gives high resolution by reflecting very narrow-band light (high Q resonances). But here's the smart part: they use the transmitted light for spectrum reconstruction (right image)! 💡 unlike traditional narrowband filters that use only small part of the transmitted light (left image).
Unlike commercial sensors (AMS, imec) that use narrow transmission filters, they use broad "bandstop" transmitted light. Result? Way more light reaches the detector while maintaining resolution. Read the below review paper for good understanding of this method. https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.abe0722
What's puzzling me: why hasn't this been tried before? 🤔 Feel like you could achieve similar results with GMR gratings (going to dig deeper into the literature on this).
Applications of such microspectrometers are huge: lab-on-chip devices, drone sensing, satellites - anywhere you need sensitive spectral measurements in a tiny package. Look at the spectra of Venus captured even working under cloudy conditions!
What do you think about this approach? Anyone working on similar concepts with GMR gratings? Would love to hear thoughts from the photonics community!
#Photonics #Science #Innovation