Every camera relies on a sensor, whether it’s an array of light-sensitive pixels or a strip of 35mm film. But what happens when you need to photograph something so tiny that the sensor itself must shrink, causing its performance to plummet?
Researchers at Northeastern University have developed a sensing technology that can detect objects as tiny as single proteins or cancer cells without shrinking the sensor. By using guided acoustic waves and specialized states of matter, the device achieves high precision within very small parameters.
About the size of a belt buckle, this device enables sensing at nano and quantum scales, with potential applications ranging from quantum computing to precision medicine.
Miniaturizing Cameras
In the past, photographing extremely small objects required shrinking the camera itself. However, as cameras get smaller, they face increasing technical challenges, explains Cristian Cassella, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern.
Cassella, an expert in microelectromechanical systems—tiny electrical and mechanical devices often smaller than a human hair—notes that reducing pixel size lowers both performance and sensitivity. He wondered, “How can you achieve the effect of smaller pixels without actually shrinking them?”
Although this idea seemed contradictory, it pushed Cassella to think creatively, leading him to collaborate with Marco Colangelo, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern. Colangelo, Cassella, and Siddhartha Ghosh, another assistant professor on the project, all share lab space in Northeastern’s EXP building.
Colangelo, an expert in condensed matter physics, studies how solid matter behaves at the atomic scale. Their breakthrough relies on topological interface states, a concept from condensed matter physics that lets them concentrate energy into nanoscale regions. This approach targets extremely small, localized areas without the performance loss that normally occurs when scaling down the whole system. (One nanometer equals one-billionth of a meter.)
Cassella notes that, thanks to its precision, the technology could impact fields from quantum computing to precision medicine. He describes it as “a seminal study demonstrating an entirely new technology” with the potential to advance science and engineering.
Ghosh adds that their method sidesteps the usual challenges of miniaturizing devices by leveraging “some clever physics” to overcome those limitations.
A Revolution in Sensing Technology
Named a topological guided acoustic wave sensor, the team’s first experiment served as a proof of concept, detecting a low-powered infrared laser just five micrometers wide—roughly a tenth the thickness of a human hair.
“Here we can truly distinguish extremely small excitations and highly localized parameters,” says Colangelo, who is particularly excited about the new avenues this device opens for physics research. “Some of the underlying physics of these devices is still unverified,” he adds, noting that understanding it better could also expand practical applications.
Ghosh is cautious about forecasting the technology’s long-term impact but acknowledges it as an exciting discovery that paves the way for future research.
When discussing authorship, Colangelo and Cassella credit each other—Colangelo praises Cassella for leading the project, while Cassella emphasizes that it was made possible by a grant Colangelo secured.
“I think we’ll likely continue developing this technology for the next 10 years,” Cassella says.
Read the original article on: Phys.Org
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