Soon, nanotechnology-powered sensors could detect everything from black ice to skin cancer.
Unlocking your phone with your face is just the beginning, says Metalenz CEO Robert Devlin. Metalenses also have abilities that can be difficult to reproduce with conventional lenses. For example, because they facilitate the detection of polarized light, they can “see” things conventional lenses can’t.
in which they use electron beams to etch patterns in sheets of graphene and other two-dimensional materials—or to build up structures made of carbon atoms atop them.as an alternative to silicon in the microchips of the future. But Dr. Fedorov says that future could include building three-dimensional structures atop two-dimensional sheets of graphene.
The end goal is the ability to use an electron beam to rapidly remove, add or modify the atoms on a surface. The result is a system that resembles 3-D printing—at the atomic scale. When Dr. Fedorov gives talks about his research, he tells audiences about what Richard Feynman proposed in 1959. “I say, ‘This is the vision,’ and then I say, ‘Sixty years later, we realized Feynman’s vision. It’s now in our hands.’”