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、保护人类健康和保护基础设施，在保护我们的安全方面发挥着至关重要的作用。借助互联网的力量，全球对建立分布式气体传感网络的兴趣正在迅速增长，这将使我们能够广泛地持续监测气体威胁。这导致了对具有高感测性能的下一代小型、轻量、低功耗和低成本气体感测设备的需求不断增长。尽管中波红外气体传感方法提供了卓越的传感能力，但在减小设备尺寸、功耗和生产成本方面仍然存在重大挑战，限制了它们在现代传感器网络场景中的应用。因此，该研究项目旨在探索创新的中波红外光子工程方法，以推进气体传感技术，努力提高效率，紧凑性和成本效益。除了研究重点之外，该项目还培养了光子学领域的STEM能力。光子学是许多尖端技术的基础，影响着经济的很大一部分，并实现了未来的先进制造工艺。为了激发下一代对光和光子学的兴趣，PI将创建一个教育推广计划，帮助农村STEM教师开发新的光子学教学模块，并促进学生参与课外教育活动。PI还将吸引本科生，特别是女性和代表性不足的少数民族，参与研究活动，以支持他们的STEM职业道路。该项目的目标是在中波红外范围内建立对量子激发的新光态的全面理解，跨越3 - 5微米。所获得的知识将有助于控制其非平凡的光与物质相互作用特性，以增强中波红外气体传感系统中三个关键光学元件的性能：光源、光电探测器和光与气体相互作用波导。其智力价值在于将量子激发的宇称时间对称性和拓扑光子学原理与中波红外光子工程研究相结合。具体而言，本项目将追求三个研究目标：1）实现有源谐振光栅的奇偶时间对称控制，以克服低提取效率和多模式宽带发射限制，并促进明亮且具有成本效益的中波红外光发射器的开发; 2）采用一种新型的低成本，自取向湿化学合成法制备高质量PbSe薄膜，用于提高非制冷中波红外探测器的性能;以及3）设计拓扑感测波导以克服芯片上气体感测的固有限制，例如本征结构无序和制造分辨率。总的来说，该项目的成果将拓宽中波红外光子工程战略的组合，提升其技术影响，以彻底改变气体传感技术，同时遵守尺寸，重量，功率和成本要求。该项目由电气，通信和网络系统部门（ECCS）共同资助，以及刺激竞争研究的既定计划（EPSCoR）该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查进行评估，被认为值得支持的搜索.