CAREER: Ultra-compact High-speed Infrared Polarimetric Spectroscopic (IRPS) Imaging system

偏振与光的强度和波长相似，包含着光的重要信息。偏振成像提供单个像素的偏振状态的定量测量，而光谱仪则捕获每个特定波长的光的强度信息。红外偏振光谱成像技术结合了红外光谱和偏振成像的优点。它不仅可以对物体进行化学测绘，还可以提供分子结构、形态、均匀性和表面状况的空间信息，这些信息对于化学分析、生物医学成像、癌症诊断、空间和工业应用是必不可少的。现有的红外偏振光谱成像系统往往存在体积大、图像采集时间长、空间分辨率低、工作波长范围有限等问题。这个职业项目的目标是设计和实现紧凑型宽带高速红外偏振光谱成像系统。所提出的系统紧凑、快速、宽带，有可能提供完整和准确的高空间和频率分辨率的测量。它们可以成为医学研究人员、医生和其他人的强大使能工具。这样的系统也有可能在工业中用于材料分析和过程监控。这个职业项目的教育和推广计划将通过让本科生和高中生以及女性和代表性不足的群体参与研究活动，促进涉及纳米技术、光学成像、红外光谱和生物医学工程的多学科研究。一组5-6年级的学生(最好是女生)将在国际学生联合会开发的在线/混合方案中接触光学工程，并将开发一门关于超表面和超材料及其应用的课程。研究成果将向公众、业界、医学研究人员、医生和其他应用专家传播，以提高公众意识，收集反馈，并寻找机会将该技术推向实际应用。该项目旨在设计和实现具有宽带波长覆盖和快速图像采集速度的超紧凑型红外偏振光谱成像系统。重点是将基于亚表面的偏振态产生器和分析器与宽带中红外光源和图像传感器进行演示和集成，以提高系统的紧凑性、图像采集速度和测量精度。所提出的偏振态发生器和分析器将利用高速可调谐亚表面的独特性质进行研究和实现。将进行理论和实验分析，以研究所提出的系统的性能，并探索成像速度、测量精度、空间和光谱分辨率的基本限制。还将调查设备和系统缺陷的影响，如制造偏差、噪声、对准误差。薄膜和其他样品的红外偏振光谱成像测量将与原型系统一起进行，以探索建议系统在实际应用中的优势和局限性，为未来的设备和系统改进提供指导。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Polarization, similar to intensity and wavelength, contains important information of light. Polarimetric imaging provides quantitative measurements of the polarization state at individual pixels while spectrometers capture the intensity information at each specific wavelength of light. Infrared polarimetric spectroscopic imaging technique combines the advantages of both infrared spectroscopy and polarimetric imaging. It not only enables chemical mapping of objects, but can also provide spatial information of molecular structure, morphology, homogeneity and surface conditions, which are essential for chemical analysis, biomedical imaging, cancer diagnosis, space and industrial applications. Existing Infrared polarimetric spectroscopic imaging system often suffer from bulky physical size, long image collection time, low spatial resolution and limited operation wavelength range. The objective of this CAREER project is to design and implement compact broadband high speed infrared polarimetric spectroscopic imaging systems. The proposed systems are compact, fast, broadband and have the potential to provide complete and accurate measurements with high spatial and frequency resolution. They can become powerful enabling tools for medical researchers, doctors and others. Such systems can potentially also be adopted in industries for material analysis and process monitoring. The education and outreach program of this CAREER project will promote multidisciplinary research involving nanotechnology, optical imaging, infrared spectroscopy and biomedical engineering by involving undergraduate and high school students and woman and underrepresented groups in research activities. A group of 5-6th grade students (preferably girls) will be introduced to optic engineering in an online/hybrid program developed by the PI and a course on metasurfaces and metamaterials and their applications will be developed. The research outcomes will be disseminated to the public, industry, medical researchers, doctors and other application experts to increase public awareness, collect feedback and seek opportunities to move the technology toward practical applications.This project is aimed to design and implement ultra-compact infrared polarimetric spectroscopic imaging systems with broadband wavelength coverage and fast imaging collection speed. The focus is to demonstrate and integrate metasurface-based polarization state generator and analyzer with broadband mid-infrared source and imaging sensor to improve the system compactness, imaging collection speed and measurement accuracy. The proposed polarization state generator and analyzer devices will be investigated and implemented by exploiting unique properties of high speed tunable metasurfaces. Theoretical and experimental analyses will be carried out to study the performance of the proposed system and explore the fundamental limitations of imaging speed, measurement accuracy, spatial and spectral resolution. The impacts of device and system imperfections, such as fabrication deviations, noise, alignment error, will also be investigated. Infrared polarimetric spectroscopic imaging measurements of thin films and other samples will be performed with prototype systems to explore the advantages and limitations of the proposed system in practical applications for future guidance on device and system improvement.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.