Making a miniature Sun

该项目将生产能够在太阳表面三分之二的温度下工作的设备。微型热板器件将由熔点在4000K以上的超高温陶瓷(UHTC)碳化汞制成。相比之下，只有三种元素的熔点高于3300K(W、Re和Ta)。在如此高的温度下操作这些热板将产生以近红外为中心的强烈黑体发射，其强度是最先进水平的1000倍以上。这种辐射被用于许多工业、医疗和国防应用，如气体传感和光谱分析。特别是，在移动传感方面有了新的需求，需要具有更宽波长能力的小型化红外光源。提出的微发射器比现有的更亮、更宽、更快，可以提高现有传感平台的速度、精度和应用范围。

This project will produce devices that are capable of operating at two thirds of the temperature of the sun's surface. Micro hot plate devices will be fabricated from the Ultra High Temperature Ceramic (UHTC) Hafnium Carbide, which has a melting point above 4000 K. To put this in perspective, only three elements have higher melting points than 3300 K (W, Re and Ta). Operating these hot plates at such high temperatures will produce intense blackbody emission centred in the Near-IR with more than 1000 times the intensity of the state of the art. Such radiation is used in many industrial, medical and defence applications such as gas sensing and spectroscopy. In particular there is a new demand in mobile sensing that requires miniaturised IR light sources with broader wavelength capabilities. The proposed micro emitters are much brighter, broader wavelength and faster than what exists today and can improve the speed, precision and range of applications of existing sensing platforms.