Thanks to PhysicsWorld.com we know that MIT has developed a new fiber that would allow a soldier to detect threats by seeing in all directions at once or to collect information to feed a stealth suit that projects an image of the surrounding environment.
SEM micrographs of the resulting fiber cross-section, illustrating the uniform conservation of the cross-section structure from the macroscopic preform to the microscopic fiber.
CREDIT: Courtesy of the Fink Lab/MIT
“The individual fibers created by the MIT team consist of two separate sheets of semiconducting glasses — just 100nm thick — folded up like a Swiss roll. Electrodes are worked into the fibers and the resulting cylinder, which is 35cm long, is covered in an insulating cladding. The fibers can detect light because photons interacting with a semiconductor material can ionize the component atoms, thus triggering a current in the presence of a potential difference.”
