I Corps: Advanced Non-Destructive Testing using Terahertz Technology

太赫兹（THz）技术已经成为一种重要的工具，可以使广泛的对产品质量控制和检验感兴趣的行业受益。食品加工、生物医学成像、电子设备制造和许多其他行业都有一个共同的需求：在不改变或损坏产品或样品的情况下“看到内部”的能力。太赫兹是一种新技术，它可以让公司以一种全新的、非破坏性的方式检查和评估他们的产品。客户可以获得的潜在信息将帮助他们更好地确定产品在整个制造过程中的故障来源。这将使客户能够建立更好的质量控制，增加产品产量和开发，从而降低公众的成本。2013年，无损检测市场规模为37.7亿美元，预计到2020年将增长到68亿美元。这说明了公司在其产品制造和开发中实施稳健的无损检测的重要性。太赫兹技术的独特特性可以很好地发展成为一种行业标准，以填补传统测试方法无法填补的空白。拟议的I-Corps项目的目标是与潜在的工业客户建立直接合作，以确定太赫兹检测如何满足他们的需求。从最初的客户发现访谈开始，将建立一批对其产品进行太赫兹检查感兴趣的公司。然后，团队将开始与这些公司进行更深入的沟通，从最有希望的公司开始，找出公司感兴趣的信息类型的确切细节，以及太赫兹如何非破坏性地提取这些信息。有了这些细节，将建立实验和初步的数据分析算法来证明这一概念。这将利用阿肯色大学现有的太赫兹成像和光谱系统进行。如果适用，公司将把产品样品送到团队进行成像和表征。有两种方法对样本进行成像；太赫兹反射模式，信号在样品的同一侧发射和检测。第二种模式是太赫兹传输，信号通过样品传输，发射器和探测器位于样品的相对两侧。最后，太赫兹光谱也可以用来表征样品的材料和评估其性能。此外，重要的参数，如重复性和测量灵敏度为每个情况将被量化。通过太赫兹检测获得的信息价值将为每个潜在客户进行评估。根据这一信息，将确定今后建立一个以“太赫兹测量即服务”为基础的小型企业的主要潜在结果在经济上是否可行。另一个潜在的结果是增加对潜在研究问题的认识，太赫兹技术可以通过推进探测器和成像算法来帮助解决这些问题。

Terahertz (THz) technology has become an important tool that can benefit a wide range of industries interested in quality control and inspection of their products. Food processing, biomedical imaging, electronic device manufacturing and many other industries all share a common need: the ability to "see inside" products or samples without changing or damaging them. THz is a new technology which could allow companies to inspect and evaluate their products in a completely new, non-destructive way. The potential information customers could gain would help them to better determine sources of failure of their products throughout the manufacturing process. This would allow the customers to establish better quality control and increase product output and development, leading to reduced costs for the general public. Non-destructive testing was a $3.77B market in 2013 and expected to grow to $6.8B by 2020. This illustrates the importance companies place on implementing robust non-destructive testing in their product manufacturing and development. THz technologies unique characteristics could very well be developed into an industry standard to fill in the gaps where conventional testing methods fail.The goal of the proposed I-Corps project is to establish direct collaboration with potential industrial customers to determine how THz inspection could fit their needs. From the initial customer discovery interviews, a pool of companies showing interest in THz inspection of their products will be established. The team will then begin more in-depth communications with these companies, starting with the most promising, to work out the exact details of the type of information the company would be interested in and how THz could non-destructively extract this information. With these details established experiments and preliminary data analysis algorithms will be developed to demonstrate the concept. This will be performed utilizing the THz Imaging and Spectroscopy system available at the University of Arkansas. If applicable, companies will ship samples of their products to the team to be imaged and characterized. There are two ways to image a sample; THz reflection mode where the signal is emitted and detected at the same side of the sample. The second mode is THz transmission where the signal is transmitted through the sample and the emitter and detector are located at opposite sides of the sample. Finally, THz spectroscopy can also be used to characterize the materials of the samples and evaluate their properties. Additionally, important parameters such as repeatability and measurement sensitivity for each case will be quantified. The value of the information gained through THz inspection will be estimated for each potential customer. From this information it will be determined if the primary potential outcome of establishing a small business in the future based on "THz measurements-as-a-service" would be an economically feasible option to pursue. Another potential outcome is to increase the knowledge of potential research problems that THz technology can help solve through advancing the detectors and the imaging algorithms.