Chinese researchers inspired by the eyes of the desert ant have developed a compact chip to detect the orientation of polarised light.
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The chip can have a wide range of uses including in navigation, fingerprint detection, and even identifying cancerous tissue, the team said.
Polarisation photodetectors (pol-PDs) are special light sensors that can sense the direction of polarised light. By identifying differences in incoming light, these photodetectors can distinguish contrast and enhance image quality.
Such photodetectors have widespread applications in areas including “geological remote sensing, machine vision [and] biological medicine”, the team wrote in a paper published in peer-reviewed journal Science Advances on December 4.
The challenge is that commercial polarised photodetectors are hard to miniaturise, as they are made bulky and complex by the complicated optical systems and parts needed for them to function, the team said.
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In the new study led by bio-inspired materials expert Li Mingzhu’s team at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who worked alongside researchers from Beihang University and Imperial College London, the scientists turned to the eyes of desert ants to inspire a simpler design.
While our eyes consist of a single eye unit, compound eyes found in insects and crustaceans are made up of many small units containing photoreceptor cells.