ABSTRACT

Gas sensors play a vital role in keeping us safe by monitoring environmental hazards, safeguarding human health, and securing infrastructure. With the power of the internet, there's a fast-growing global interest in forming distributive gas sensing networks that could enable us to continuous monitor gas threat broadly. This has led to a rising demand for the next generation of small, lightweight, low-power, and low-cost gas sensing devices with high sensing performance. Despite the remarkable sensing capabilities offered by mid-wave infrared gas sensing methods, substantial challenges persist in reducing device size, power consumption, and production costs, limiting their application in modern sensor network scenarios. This research project thus aims to explore innovative mid-wave infrared photonic engineering methods to advance gas sensing technologies, striving for efficiency, compactness, and cost-effectiveness. Beyond the research focus, the project also fosters a STEM-competent workforce in photonics. Photonics is foundational to many cutting-edge technologies, impacting a significant portion of the economy and enabling future advanced manufacturing processes. To stimulate the future generation?s interest in light and photonics, the PI will create an education outreach program to help rural STEM teachers to develop new photonic teaching modules, and to promote student participation in afterschool education events. The PI will also engage undergraduate students, especially women and underrepresented minorities, in research activities to support their STEM career path.

The goal of this project is to establish a comprehensive understanding of quantum-inspired new states of light within the mid-wave infrared range, spanning 3-5 microns. The obtained knowledge will facilitate the control of their non-trivial light-matter interaction properties to enhance the performance of three critical optical components in mid-wave infrared gas sensing systems: the light source, photodetector, and light-gas interaction waveguide. The intellectual merit lies in the marriage of quantum-inspired parity-time-symmetry and topological photonic principles with the mid-wave infrared photonic engineering research. Specifically, this project will pursue three research objectives: 1) enabling parity-time-symmetry control in active resonant gratings to overcome the low extraction efficiency and multimodal broadband emission constraints and facilitate the development of bright and cost-effective mid-wave infrared light emitters; 2) employing a novel low-cost, self-oriented wet chemical synthesis method to prepare high-quality PbSe thin films for boosting the performance of uncooled mid-wave infrared photodetectors; and 3) engineering topological sensing waveguides to overcome the inherent limitations of on-chip gas sensing, such as intrinsic structural disorder and fabrication resolution. Overall, the project's outcomes will broaden the portfolio of mid-wave infrared photonic engineering strategies, elevating their technological impact to revolutionize gas sensing technologies while adhering to size, weight, power, and cost requirements.

This project is jointly funded by the Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems division(ECCS), and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).

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.

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