Quantum Dot Spectrometer for Smartphones: Innovative Invention

Quantum Dot Spectrometer for Smartphones: Innovative Invention

Q.4: MIT scientists have recently created a Quantum Dot Spectrometer which will fit inside a smartphone camera. Provide an overview of this new scientific invention.

- Scientists at MIT have created a Quantum Dot Spectrometer which is snug enough to fit inside the camera of a smartphone

- Spectrometers are instruments which measure the light’s properties

- The lead author who developed this invention is Jei Bao a former MIT postdoctoral student

- QD spectrometer is a fresh application for quantum dots and it has been used mostly for biological molecules and labelling cells plus television screens and computers

Overview: Salient Features

- This device is portable and it can be used for the diagnosis of diseases such as skin conditions or detect environmental pollutants

- The size of the device is about the typical US quarter

- The QD spectrometer deploys numerous quantum dot materials and each filters a specific set of wavelengths of light

- This device has many benefits such as flexibility, cost reduction and simplicity

How It Works

- In the QD spectrometer, scientists come up with an optical structure that is, QD filters through printing of liquid droplets into a thin film to be placed atop a photodetector such as the charge coupled devices located in smartphone cameras

- Researchers then came up with an algorithm for analysis of percentage of photons absorbed through reach filter and recombination of the information from each one for the calculation of the intensity and wavelength of original light rays

- A higher resolution can be obtained if more wavelengths are covered and more quantum dot materials are there

- Scientists used around 200 types of quantum dots spread over 300 nanometre; these spectrometers can cover a bigger range of light frequencies with more dots

Facts and Stats

- Quantum dots refer to a kind of nanocrystals discovered in the earlier part of the 1980s

- It is created through a combination of metals such as lead or cadmium with other elements such as arsenic, selenium or sulphur

- The ratio of these starting materials, its temperature and reaction time are manipulated to generate unlimited dots with differences in an electronic property referred to as bandage which determines the light wavelengths each dot will absorb