Forget X-Rays, Say Hi To T-Ray Technology And Star-Trek Tricorder Scanners

Everyone has heard of X-rays, but what about T-rays, the technology behind the full-body security scanners increasingly found in airports around the world?

AsianScientist (Jan. 20, 2012) – Everyone has heard of X-rays, the kind used by doctors to check for a broken bone, or by scientists to find the precise structures of proteins. But what about tetrahertz radiation or T-rays, the technology behind the full-body security scanners increasingly found in airports around the world?

In a study published this week in Nature Photonics, researchers from Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) and U.K.’s Imperial College London have made T-rays into a much stronger directional beam at room temperature conditions, a breakthrough that allows future T-ray systems to be smaller, more portable, easier to operate, and much cheaper.

Taking a leaf out of the Star Trek movies, the team envisions a medical “tricorder” type T-ray scanner and detector – a portable sensing, computing, and data communications device – to detect biological phenomena such as increased blood flow around tumors.

T-rays, already in use in airport security cameras and spectroscopy systems, are waves in the far infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum that have a wavelength hundreds of times longer than visible light.

The potential applications of T-ray technology are endless, as T-rays can sense the unique signature of molecules in the THz range, such as those present in tumors and DNA. T-rays can also be used to detect explosives or drugs, in gas pollution monitoring, or for non-destructive testing of semiconductor integrated circuit chips.

Currently, continuous wave T-rays are created under very low temperatures with high energy consumption, while medical T-ray imaging devices in use have only low output power and are very expensive.

Using a new ‘nano-antenna’ technique, the researchers produced amplified T-ray waves by shining light of differing wavelengths on a pair of electrodes – two pointed strips of metal separated by a 100 nanometer gap on top of a semiconductor wafer – greatly enhancing the THz field and generating a power output that is 100 times higher than conventional THz sources.

“The secret behind the innovation lies in the new nano-antenna that we had developed and integrated into the semiconductor chip,” revealed lead author Dr. Jing Hua Teng, from A*STAR’s Institute of Materials Research and Engineering.

The article can be found at: Tanoto H et al. (2012) Greatly enhanced continuous-wave terahertz emission by nano-electrodes in a photoconductive photomixer.

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Source: A*STAR.
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