Two UNM Electrical and Computer Engineering Associate Professors in the Center for High Technology Materials Sanjay Krishna and Majeed Hayat are exploring a way to build images using a unique device. They call it a quantum dot camera.
They’ve been recognized by the research community for their project and have entered into an agreement with Los Alamos National Laboratory for field testing.
The image from the camera, which is actually a sort of heat sensor, allows it to “see” photons emitted from heat associated with a person or object. When they put a graduate student in a dark room and took his image with the camera, this is what they saw.
View clip: Quantum Dot Camera
Krishna and Hayat manipulate the images by changing the bias or voltage across the quantum dots on the sensor. That gives them a subtle infrared color, which is not too different to the signals generated by the color cones in the human eye.
When they scan a hillside with the sensor, they see many different, but similar-looking areas. When they alter the spectrum bias, suddenly they may see only certain types of rocks highlighted. A graduate student of Hayat’s is exploring whether the sensor can be made to differentiate between sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rocks. What is unique about the quantum dot infrared camera compared to existing technologies for infrared color sensors is that it does not require any optical filters to distinguish between infrared colors. This can offer a huge advantage in terms of weight and cost of the sensor.
The quantum dot camera takes advantage of something called the quantum confined stark effect for the color tunable element. Think about putting the sensor on a satellite, then tuning it to see only certain kinds of rocks, vegetation or other materials of interest. Krishna and Hayat say the technology when further developed can be used for remote sensing of toxic chemical elements, or to do geological and environmental monitoring.
Krishna and Hayat, along with University of Arizona School of Optical Science Professor Scott J. Tyo have spent the last three years working on proving the technology. Now the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s International, Space & Response Division in partnership with UNM will take the sensor and field test it as a next step in development of the technology.
Krishna, Hayat and Tyo have just received the Chief Scientist Award for Excellence from the National Consortium for Measures and Signatures Intelligence Research (NCMR) for their project.
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu