Electrical and Electronic Engineering - Research Publications

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    Compact Chemical Identifier Based on Plasmonic Metasurface Integrated with Microbolometer Array
    Meng, J ; Weston, L ; Balendhran, S ; Wen, D ; Cadusch, JJ ; Unnithan, RR ; Crozier, KB (WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH, 2022-04)
    Abstract The identification of chemicals from their mid‐infrared spectra has applications that include industrial production of chemicals, food production, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and environmental monitoring. This is generally done using laboratory benchtop tools, such as the Fourier transform infrared spectrometer. Although such systems offer high performance, alternative platforms offering reduced size, weight, and cost can enable a host of new applications, e.g. in consumer personal electronics. Here a compact microspectrometer platform for chemical identification, comprising a mid‐infrared metasurface integrated with a lightweight (≈1 g) and very small (≈1 cm3) microbolometer‐based thermal camera is experimentally demonstrated. A machine learning algorithm is trained to analyze the microspectrometer output and classify chemicals based on their mid‐infrared fingerprints. High accuracy identification of four liquid chemicals, concentration quantification of ethyl lactate in cyclohexane down to subpercentage levels, and the classification of food and drug samples is demonstrated.
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    Infrared modulation via near-room-temperature phase transitions of vanadium oxides & core–shell composites
    Taha, M ; Balendhran, S ; Sherrell, PC ; Kirkwood, N ; Wen, D ; Wang, S ; Meng, J ; Bullock, J ; Crozier, KB ; Sciacca, L (Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), 2023)
    Vanadium oxides (VOx) are highly promising materials for heat retardant coatings, enabled by their insulator-to-metal phase transition (IMT). Currently, this IMT typically occurs at 68 °C, well above room temperature. Here, we develop a dopant-free approach to lower the IMT temperature to ∼40 °C enabling near-room temperature infrared modulation, by simple, solution phase synthesis. This is achieved by both controlling the stoichiometry of the metal oxide and by using a SiO2 shell around the VOx particles, with the difference in thermal expansion coefficient between SiO2 and VOx inducing sufficient strain in the VOx to dramatically lower the IMT temperature. This approach enables the production of a functional solution of suspended VOx nanoparticles with near-room temperature IMT. The combination of near-room temperature IMT and solution phase nanoparticles dramatically increases the ease, scalability, and efficacy of VOx application.
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    Material identification by plasmonic infrared microspectrometer employing machine learning
    Meng, J ; Weston, L ; Balendhran, S ; Wen, D ; Cadusch, JJ ; Unnithan, RR ; Crozier, KB (Optica Publishing Group, 2021-01-01)
    We demonstrate a microspectrometer comprising plasmonic filters integrated with an infrared camera. Blackbody light illuminates the material being studied, with transmitted light collected by the microspectrometer. The latter uses machine learning to identify the material.