Are safety and environmental factors being consideration here? Putting thin films of some mercury compound into consumer electronics doesn't sound great, and is probably already banned by regulations like RoHS.
bloggie•3mo ago
As someone who works with THz I can assure you that nobody has thought of environmental factors as these technologies are far from being implemented in any consumer or industrial device - as stated in the article, this is fundamental science. If you go to the THz conference or PW all you will get is academic papers. The applications are certainly very interesting given the nearly unlimited bandwidth available in the THz regime and the fact that it's unlicensed, but we are far away from any kind of real implementation despite decades of articles like these.
adastra22•3mo ago
What are some of the things THz would be good for?
bloggie•3mo ago
Actual applications at the moment are mostly imaging, the 'nudie scanners' at airports and THz imaging at various frequencies is in use for food inspection as it can easily show blemishes/defects in produce that would otherwise be invisible. I read a paper once on detecting counterfeit money. Analysis of airborne contaminants / weather prediction are other possible applications. For telecom it has been considered (at very early stages) for 6G due to the huge bandwidth available. Really there are a lot of 'possible' applications but implementing them has proven difficult either because it requires advancements in materials or other risky aspects or because it's beaten by existing technologies at the moment.
CheeseFromLidl•3mo ago
A terrahertz rectifier would be a boon for solar energy.
K0balt•3mo ago
I’m curious, how so?
CheeseFromLidl•3mo ago
With terrahertz rectifiers you can use antennas and diodes to convert light to DC.
Ooooh yeah! They’d have to work right at the antenna, but maybe some kind of metamaterial process could make more efficient solar panels that way? Hard
To imaging that they would be cheap
Though.
adastra22•3mo ago
Can I speak with you? I’m managing a startup that is working on a manufacturing process that might let us make THz sensors. I’m hoping to get to know the product space better. My email is in my profile.
This is, morbidly, from crematorium emissions. Now imagine if that was the output of every electronics section of the local recycling centre/dumps.
The problem is if a particular material becomes the golden goose and companies won't avoid it if there is a perceived/real advantage.
short_sells_poo•3mo ago
This is so far out of my expertise that I have nothing to add to the actual topic, but I must say that the veritable forest of beam mirrors, splitters and whatnots looks fascinating. It reminds me a bit of the early integrated circuit research where people had similar forests of transistors.
rnhmjoj•3mo ago
bloggie•3mo ago
adastra22•3mo ago
bloggie•3mo ago
CheeseFromLidl•3mo ago
K0balt•3mo ago
CheeseFromLidl•3mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_rectenna
K0balt•3mo ago
adastra22•3mo ago
physarum_salad•3mo ago
This is, morbidly, from crematorium emissions. Now imagine if that was the output of every electronics section of the local recycling centre/dumps.
The problem is if a particular material becomes the golden goose and companies won't avoid it if there is a perceived/real advantage.