Metamaterial Device May Enable Scientists to Marshal the Power of THz Radiation for Use in Future Medical Scanning Applications

Nanowerk News reports that a group of scientists at Boston University (BU) has developed a new way to detect and control terahertz (THz) radiation using optics and materials science. Composed of electromagnetic waves, this type of radiation can pass through materials safely. Based on this work, it may be possible one day to develop safer medical scanners.

Led by Richard Averitt, the researchers have long sought devices that could control THz transmissions, enabling information to be sent via THz waves. While THz waves resemble x-rays insofar as they can pass through solid materials, they differ from x-rays insofar as they do not damage the materials through which they pass.

The BU team's breakthrough approach to THz waves is based on the use of metamaterials, which exhibit the unusual property of interacting with light, a property that natural materials do not have. The resarchers use metamaterials to interact with and change the intensity of a beam of THz radiation. Their device consists of an array of split-ring-resonators, a checkerboard of flexible metamaterial panels that can bend and tilt. By rotating the panels, the team can control the electromagnetic properties of a beam of THz energy passing by them.

Arrays of metamaterial panels could potentially function as pixels on a camera for detecting THz radiation, Averitt remarks. Absorption of THz radiation would cause the panels to tilt more or less depending on the intensity of the THz bombarding them. However, marshaling THz for future detection applications will require more-powerful THz sources, such as quantum cascade lasers.

More information on this technolgy can be obtained from Nanowerk News.