Using Nature to Produce a Revolutionary Optical Material

We would like to congratulate Integricote CEO (Prof. Shay Curran), CTO (Dr. Shawn Liao), and Research Scientist (Dr. Surendra Maharjan) for being a huge part of an international research collaboration which resulted in a publication in a very prestigious journal “Nature Communications’. The reported work is based on nanocomposite material capable of protecting humans and optical sensors against intense light (highly intense laser pulses), which also holds promise for high-speed communication. Congratulations to the team!

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A snippet from the original article below:

Nanocomposite Protects Against Intense Light, Holds Promise for Expanding High-Speed Optical Networking Capacity

An international team of researchers has reported a new way to safeguard drones, surveillance cameras and other equipment against laser attacks, which can disable or destroy the equipment. The capability is known as optical limiting.

The work, published in the journal Nature Communication, also describes a superior manner of telecom switching without the use of electronics; instead, they use an all-optical method that could improve the speed and capacity of internet communications. That could remove a roadblock in moving from 4GLTE to 5G networks.

The team reported that a material created using tellurium nanorods – produced by naturally occurring bacteria – is an effective nonlinear optical material, capable of protecting electronic devices against high-intensity bursts of light, including those emitted by inexpensive household lasers targeted at aircraft, drones or other critical systems. The researchers describe the material and its performance as a material of choice for next-generation optoelectronic and photonic devices.

Seamus Curran, a physics professor at the University of Houston’s College of Natural Sciences & Mathematics and one of the paper’s authors, said while most optical materials are chemically synthesized, using a biologically-based nanomaterial proved less expensive and less toxic. “We found a cheaper, easier, simpler way to manufacture the material,” he said. “We let Mother Nature do it.”

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