Home News 3D Printed Terahertz Lens Could Improve Research

3D Printed Terahertz Lens Could Improve Research

Researchers from the Northwestern University have developed a lens that is capable of picking up terahertz (THz) wavelengths.

Using 3D printing the researchers, Fan Zhou, Wei Cao, Biqin Dong, Timothy Reissman, Weili Zhang and Cheng Sun, were capable of creating a lens for very high frequencies. These frequencies range from 300GHz and 3THz.

The process of making these frequencies visible is very complex. The researchers developed a lens that is able of doing that. The structure is 3D printed and looks like some sort of light bulb.

Cheng Sun, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering:

“Typical lenses—even fancy ones—have many, many components to counter their intrinsic imperfections. Sometimes modern imaging systems stack several lenses to deliver optimal imaging performance, but this is very expensive and complex.”

This lenses could be produced very cheaply and be used for further research. Terahertz scanners could be build with this lenses. These scanners can detect concealed plastics or chemicals similar to X-rays but less harmful to humans.

You can find the paper about the 3D printed terahertz lenses here.


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