Carbon nanorods open door to multispectral light sensors

The new development overcomes issues associated with bulk crystalline semiconductors used for near infrared (NIR) applications, which are expensive to make, have limited spectral range and difficult to keep pure, using relatively low-cost organic materials and semiconductor nanocrystals to access the visual wide spectral range.

In use, the new light sensor – which exploits the properties of one dimensional single-crystal nanorods of C₆₀ - could be used in medical and security imaging via low cost cameras, pairing low cost NIR imaging with conventional imaging.

Dr Richard Curry, from Surrey’s Advanced Technology Institute said the sensor – which separates out the role of absorbing photons and carrying the current flow into two separate parts – works from the UV through to about 1,400nm, which is out towards where telecommunications is used in the NIR.

‘It has something called a large linear dynamic range, which means you get a linear response for a wide range of light levels right from nanoWatts/cm squared right up to mW,’ he said. ‘That linearity is also very useful, there’s no saturation effects going on in this detector.