Comments
Scientists have developed gen-next devices that use terahertz waves to detect explosives, chemical agents and dangerous biological substances from safe distances.
Current terahertz sources are large, multi-component systems that sometimes require complex vacuum systems, external pump lasers and even cryogenic cooling.
The devices are heavy, expensive, and hard to transport, operate, and maintain.
“A single-component solution capable of room temperature and widely tunable operation is highly desirable to enable next generation terahertz systems,” said Manijeh Razeghi, Walter P Murphy Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Razeghi and her team have been working to develop such a device.
In a paper in the journal Applied Physics Letters, they have demonstrated a room temperature, highly tunable, high power terahertz source.
Based on nonlinear mixing in quantum cascade lasers, the source can emit up to 1.9 milliwatts of power and has a wide frequency coverage of 1 to 4.6 terahertz.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.