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AnonTechie [soylentnews.org] writes:

It may look like something you’d use for target practice, but this is a new kind of sensor that can detect the presence of all kinds of light—and reacts to it in super-quick time, too.

In fact, the graphene sensor is, according to the researchers that built it, the first time that a single detector has been able to monitor such a huge swathe of electromagnetic spectrum— from visible light, through infrared radiation, and right the way through to terahertz radiation. It was built by a team from at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf labs [www.hzdr.de] in Germany.

The target-like pattern is in fact an antenna, with the different length scales providing the ability to detect different frequencies across the spectrum. They funnel the sensed radiation to the center, where it’s focussed on a a tiny flake of graphene sat atop a piece of silicon carbide. In the past, the materials used at the center of such antennae haven’t been sensitive across a wide range of frequencies—but fortunately graphene is.

http://gizmodo.com/this-graphene-detector-monitors-all-forms-of-light-and-1739578134 [gizmodo.com]

[Abstract]: https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-23-22-28728 [osapublishing.org]

[Also Covered By]: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151027123344.htm [sciencedaily.com]

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