6月19日消息，据外媒报道，加拿大大学及康宁的研究人员已成功将传透明感器植入大猩猩玻璃中。这预示未来触摸屏中也将嵌入传感器。
入的透明元件一共有两种，其中之一是较常规的温度传感器，另一种是较为新颖的智能机认证传感器——使用光波导，用玻璃通道中的光子代替线路中的电子。
每种传感器都被激光嵌入坚固耐用的大猩猩玻璃，这同时也是光子第一次被嵌入其中。
研究者预计，未来透明传感器可以嵌入任何玻璃表面，波导温度传感器、压力传感器也在开发之中，但需要三维蚀刻技术以保证透明度。
以下为原文：
Researchers from a Canadian university andCorning have successfully implanted transparent sensors into the Gorilla Glassused by most smartphones, possibly allowing a future where touchscreens arealso sensory devices.
Instead of using electricity, however, thetwo transparent devices—one a conventional temperature sensor, the other a morenovel way of authenticating a smartphone—use optical waveguides, funnelingphotons through glass channels rather than electricity through wires.
Raman Kashyap, a professor of electricalengineering at the Polytechnique Montreal in Canada, said it should be possiblefor manufacturers to begin building in the technology inside of smartphoneswithin a year with “focused development.” “We are actively looking to partnerwith industry to exploit this technology,” Kashyap says.
Each sensor was laser-etched into the glassitself, the first time photonics have been embedded into the rugged,scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass, according to a paper published by OpticsInfoBase. In fact, the researchers claimed that Gorilla Glass yielded thelowest-measured loss value, the fastest fabrication times, and the longest,high-quality waveguides of any glass. The waveguides used by the researcherstook 10 seconds to write on average, they said.
The temperature sensor was known as aMach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) based temperature sensor, which uses the wayin which glass deforms under heat to deduce the temperature as light passesthrough the waveguide. The researchers also etched a unique waveguide into thescreen, allowing it to uniquely identify itself when infrared light shonethrough it. In the latter case, the researchers said, the optical waveguidecould be used to ensure the phone wasn’t cloned.
Kashyap said that the development of thetransparent sensors anticipate a future where sensors could be embedded intoany glass surface. So far, in addition to the waveguide temperature sensordeveloped by his team, a force sensor has been developed through an independentresearch effort. Since the waveguides are etched by laser in three dimensions,they can even be stacked over one another—again, without a loss intransparency.
Though the team included Ming-Jun Li, aresearcher at Corning, the company has made no announcements about embeddingwaveguides into future glass. Corning has already moved on to its thirdgeneration of strengthened Gorilla Glass, as well as an anti-microbial effort.But there’s always hope for the future.
