Distorted cell-phone photos and big, clunky telephoto lenses could be things of the past.
UW-Madison Electrical and Computer Engineering Associate Professor Zhenqiang (Jack) Ma and colleagues have developed a flexible light-sensitive material that could revolutionize photography and other imaging technologies.
Their technology is featured on the cover of the January issue of Applied Physics Letters.
When a device records an image, light passes through a lens and lands on a photodetector -- a light-sensitive material like the sensor in a digital camera.
Inspired by the human eye, Ma's curved photodetector could eliminate that distortion. In the eye, light enters though a single lens, but at the back of the eye, the image falls upon the curved retina, eliminating distortion. "If you can make a curved imaging plane, you just need one lens," says Ma. "That's why this development is extremely important."
Ma and his group can create curved photodetectors with specially fabricated nanomembranes -- extremely thin, flexible sheets of germanium, a very light-sensitive material often used in high-end imaging sensors. Researchers then can apply the nanomembranes to any polymer substrate, such as a thin, flexible piece of plastic. Currently, the group has demonstrated photodetectors curved in one direction, but Ma hopes next to develop hemispherical sensors.
"We can easily realize very high-density flexible and sensitive imaging arrays, because the photodetector material germanium itself is extremely bendable and extremely efficient in absorbing light," Ma adds.
Ma's co-authors include UW-Madison Materials Science and Engineering Professor Max Lagally and University of Michigan Professor Pallab Bhattacharya.
Contact: Zhenqiang (Jack) Ma mazq@engr.wisc.edu 608-261-1095 University of Wisconsin-Madison
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