Interviews
A fabric can be your new camera!!
22 Jul '09
5 min read
The team starts with a macroscopic cylinder, or preform, of these elements. That preform is placed into a special furnace that melts the components, carefully drawing them into miniscule fibers that retain the original orientation of the various layers. The process can produce many meters of fiber.
Fink's team demonstrated the power of their approach by placing an object - a smiley face - between a light source and a small swatch of fabric composed of the fibers that was in turn connected to an external amplifying electrical circuit and computer.
The individual fibers measure the intensity of the light illuminating them and convert it to an electrical signal. Importantly, they are also designed to differentiate between light at different wavelengths or colors. A mesh of fibers is then deployed to measure light intensity distribution at different wavelengths across a large area.
In the current work, the smiley face was illuminated with light at two separate wavelengths. This generated a distinct pattern on the fabric mesh that was then fed into a computer. From there, an algorithm described earlier by the Fink team in Nature Materials assimilates the data to create a black-and-white image of the object on a computer screen.
First author Fabien Sorin, a postdoctoral associate in RLE, DMSE and ISN, said that as the individual fibers become more sophisticated, it is possible to envision fabrics with more intriguing and complex functionalities, such as ones capable of producing crisper images in color.
"It is exciting to merge nanotechnology, which is at the forefront of modern science, with textiles and fabrics, one of man's oldest technologies," Sorin said.
Sorin's and Fink's colleagues on the work are Ofer Shapira, also a postdoctoral associate in RLE and ISN; Ayman F. Abouraddy of the University of Central Florida; Matthew Spencer of MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Nicholas D. Orf of RLE, DMSE and ISN; and John D. Joannopoulos, director of the ISN and MIT's Francis Wright Davis Professor of Physics.
This work was supported by the Army Research Office through the ISN, the National Science Foundation through the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center Program, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Department of Energy.
Fink's team demonstrated the power of their approach by placing an object - a smiley face - between a light source and a small swatch of fabric composed of the fibers that was in turn connected to an external amplifying electrical circuit and computer.
The individual fibers measure the intensity of the light illuminating them and convert it to an electrical signal. Importantly, they are also designed to differentiate between light at different wavelengths or colors. A mesh of fibers is then deployed to measure light intensity distribution at different wavelengths across a large area.
In the current work, the smiley face was illuminated with light at two separate wavelengths. This generated a distinct pattern on the fabric mesh that was then fed into a computer. From there, an algorithm described earlier by the Fink team in Nature Materials assimilates the data to create a black-and-white image of the object on a computer screen.
First author Fabien Sorin, a postdoctoral associate in RLE, DMSE and ISN, said that as the individual fibers become more sophisticated, it is possible to envision fabrics with more intriguing and complex functionalities, such as ones capable of producing crisper images in color.
"It is exciting to merge nanotechnology, which is at the forefront of modern science, with textiles and fabrics, one of man's oldest technologies," Sorin said.
Sorin's and Fink's colleagues on the work are Ofer Shapira, also a postdoctoral associate in RLE and ISN; Ayman F. Abouraddy of the University of Central Florida; Matthew Spencer of MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Nicholas D. Orf of RLE, DMSE and ISN; and John D. Joannopoulos, director of the ISN and MIT's Francis Wright Davis Professor of Physics.
This work was supported by the Army Research Office through the ISN, the National Science Foundation through the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center Program, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Department of Energy.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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