Scientists eye imaging device

US scientists have created an imaging device with a layout that is based on the human eye.

The researchers, at the University of Illinois and Northwestern University, developed the hemispherical 'eye' camera using an array of single-crystalline silicon detectors and electronics, configured in a stretchable, interconnected mesh.

John Rogers, the Flory-Founder chair professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois, said: 'Conformally wrapping surfaces with stretchable sheets of optoelectronics provides a practical route for integrating well-developed planar device technologies onto complex curvilinear objects.

'This approach allows us to put electronics in places where we couldn’t before. We can now, for the first time, move device design beyond the flatland constraints of conventional wafer-based systems.'

The camera’s design is based on that of the human eye, which has a simple, single-element lens and a hemispherical detector. The camera integrates such a detector with a hemispherical cap and imaging lens, to yield a system with the overall size, shape and layout of the human eye.