Light-Sensing Fibers for Transparent Cameras

MIT researchers have demonstrated that nearly transparent webs made up of novel semiconducting fibers could replace lenses and sensors in cameras, and, among other things, lead to uniforms or automobile exteriors that give people a continuous view of their surroundings.

The fibers are made of a semiconducting glass core, lined along its full length by wires that act as positive and negative electrodes, and surrounded by a transparent polymer (see link to images below). When light hits the photosensitive core, an electrical current in the fiber changes, registering the hit.

A mesh of these fibers can then be used to identify the location of the light on a surface. In the Nature Materials paper, the researchers, led by materials scientist Yoel Fink and physicist John Joannopoulos, demonstrate that the fibers, in addition to locating a point of light, can be used to determine the direction from which a light beam comes and can also sense light from a scene to form an image. "Here's a structure that's close to being invisible -- but can see," says one of the team members, Ayman Abouraddy, a research scientist at MIT.

Source: technologyreview.comAdded: 28 July 2006