Graphene-Based Image Sensor To Enhance Low-Light Photography 103
cylonlover writes "A team of scientists at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore has developed a new image sensor from graphene that promises to improve the quality of images captured in low light conditions. In tests, it has proved to be 1,000 times more sensitive to light than existing complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) or charge-coupled device (CCD) camera sensors in addition to operating at much lower voltages, consequently using 10 times less energy."
New type of "bio" imaging ? (Score:4, Interesting)
There was this article on slashdot 4 years ago, http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/07/23/1819215/people-emit-visible-light.
Summary:
"The human body literally glows, emitting a visible light in extremely small quantities at levels that rise and fall with the day, scientists now reveal. Japanese researchers have shown that the body emits visible light, 1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive. In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is thought to be a byproduct of biochemical reactions involving free radicals."
So humans emit light that is 1,000 times too weak to detect, but this new sensor is 1,000 more sensitive to light, what a coincident! I imagine this would have great applications in the health industry eg. passive health assessment. Or another use might be a better lie detector :)
Real world graphene? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is there any readily available consumer products, or even industrial products, that use graphene? If not then how long do we have to keep hearing about how great graphene is before we can actually use it?
Re: 1000 times better? (Score:1, Interesting)
Ah, thanks your comment, I coudn't figure out how they define a 1000 fold improvement. Although I'm not sure that's how they define the improvement. Actually, normal ccd's might have a qe of a few 10%, but the rest of the electronics must still be able to detect that electron with a signal to noise of more than one. In practice, the readout noise is such that you need several tens of electrons. In single photon ccd's this is done by multiplying the amount of carriers using impact ionisation in the ccd. These so called emccd's are terribly expensive. Perhaps the graphene detectors make it easier to generate more electrons out of one photon. It does have a very small bandgap...