CAREER: Enabling New States of Light in Mid-Wave Infrared Photonics for Gas Sensing Applications

职业：在气体传感应用的中波红外光子学中实现新的光态

• 批准号: 2340060
• 负责人: Binbin Weng
• 金额: $ 49.74万
• 依托单位: University of Oklahoma Norman Campus
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-03-01 至 2029-02-28
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2340060&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Enabling; New; States; Light

Gas sensors play a vital role in keeping us safe by monitoring environmental hazards, safeguarding human health, and securing infrastructure. With the power of the internet, there's a fast-growing global interest in forming distributive gas sensing networks that could enable us to continuous monitor gas threat broadly. This has led to a rising demand for the next generation of small, lightweight, low-power, and low-cost gas sensing devices with high sensing performance. Despite the remarkable sensing capabilities offered by mid-wave infrared gas sensing methods, substantial challenges persist in reducing device size, power consumption, and production costs, limiting their application in modern sensor network scenarios. This research project thus aims to explore innovative mid-wave infrared photonic engineering methods to advance gas sensing technologies, striving for efficiency, compactness, and cost-effectiveness. Beyond the research focus, the project also fosters a STEM-competent workforce in photonics. Photonics is foundational to many cutting-edge technologies, impacting a significant portion of the economy and enabling future advanced manufacturing processes. To stimulate the future generation’s interest in light and photonics, the PI will create an education outreach program to help rural STEM teachers to develop new photonic teaching modules, and to promote student participation in afterschool education events. The PI will also engage undergraduate students, especially women and underrepresented minorities, in research activities to support their STEM career path.The goal of this project is to establish a comprehensive understanding of quantum-inspired new states of light within the mid-wave infrared range, spanning 3-5 microns. The obtained knowledge will facilitate the control of their non-trivial light-matter interaction properties to enhance the performance of three critical optical components in mid-wave infrared gas sensing systems: the light source, photodetector, and light-gas interaction waveguide. The intellectual merit lies in the marriage of quantum-inspired parity-time-symmetry and topological photonic principles with the mid-wave infrared photonic engineering research. Specifically, this project will pursue three research objectives: 1) enabling parity-time-symmetry control in active resonant gratings to overcome the low extraction efficiency and multimodal broadband emission constraints and facilitate the development of bright and cost-effective mid-wave infrared light emitters; 2) employing a novel low-cost, self-oriented wet chemical synthesis method to prepare high-quality PbSe thin films for boosting the performance of uncooled mid-wave infrared photodetectors; and 3) engineering topological sensing waveguides to overcome the inherent limitations of on-chip gas sensing, such as intrinsic structural disorder and fabrication resolution. Overall, the project's outcomes will broaden the portfolio of mid-wave infrared photonic engineering strategies, elevating their technological impact to revolutionize gas sensing technologies while adhering to size, weight, power, and cost requirements.This project is jointly funded by the Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems division(ECCS), and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

气体传感器通过监测环境危害，保护人类健康和确保基础设施来确保我们的安全至关重要。凭借互联网的力量，全球对形成分配气体敏感性网络的兴趣很快，这可以使我们能够继续广泛监控天然气威胁。这导致对下一代小型，轻量级，低功率和低成本气体灵敏度设备的需求不断上升。尽管中波红外气体灵敏度方法提供了显着的传感器功能，但仍在降低设备尺寸，功耗和生产成本方面仍然存在重大挑战，从而限制了它们在现代传感器网络方案中的应用。因此，该研究项目旨在探索创新的中波红外光子工程方法，以提高气体敏感性技术，努力提高效率，紧凑性和成本效益。除了研究重点外，该项目还培养了光子学中能力的劳动力。光子学是许多尖端技术的基础，影响了大部分经济，并实现了未来的先进制造过程。为了激发未来一代对光和光子学的兴趣，PI将创建一个教育外展计划，以帮助粗糙的STEM教师开发新的光子教学模块，并促进学生参加毕业后的教育活动。 PI还将吸引本科生，尤其是妇女和代表性不足的少数群体，以支持其STEM职业道路。该项目的目的是建立对跨波动感染范围内的量子启发的新的光明状态，跨越3-5微米。所获得的知识将支持其非平凡的光 - 物质相互作用的控制，以增强中波感染气体传感系统中三个关键光学组件的性能：光源，光电探测器和光 - 气相互作用波导。智力优点在于与中波红外光子工程研究的量子启发的平价时间对称性和拓扑光子原理的结合。具体而言，该项目将追求三个研究目标：1）在主动谐振光栅中实现平等时间对称性控制，以克服低提取效率和多模式宽带发射约束，并维持明亮且具有成本效益的中波中波红外光线发射器的发展； 2）采用一种新型的低成本，自我导向的湿化学合成方法来制备高质量的PBSE薄膜，以提高未冷却的中波红外光电探测器的性能； 3）工程拓扑传感波导以克服片上气体感应的固有局限性，例如内在的结构障碍和制造分辨率。总体而言，该项目的结果将扩大中波红外光子工程策略的投资组合，在坚持尺寸，重量，权力和成本要求的同时，提高了其技术影响，以革命性的革新气体传感技术。该项目由电气，通信和网络系统部门（ECCS）和统计的统计计划（EPSOR ISS）（EPORS）的计划共同资助（EPORS）。认为值得通过基金会的智力优点和更广泛影响的评论标准来评估值得支持。