A new optical sensor costing just $10 could bring laboratory-level precision to wearable health monitors, potentially allowing people to track blood glucose without needles. The technology could also transform food testing, industrial quality control, and environmental monitoring. Researchers at the University of Cambridge and GlitterinTech (a start-up founded by the same research group) have developed a new type of optical spectrometer that combines exceptional accuracy with a remarkably small size and low cost.
Measuring just centimeters across, the device could be incorporated into portable electronics and wearable health technology. Its potential applications range from monitoring important health markers in real time to identifying materials and detecting changes in chemical composition. Optical spectrometers work by analyzing light to reveal information about the substances it interacts with.
They are essential tools in medicine, manufacturing, chemical testing, and environmental research. However, making these instruments smaller has traditionally meant compromising their performance. Compact spectrometers often have limited measurement ranges, reduced resolution, or lower accuracy, making them better suited to identifying substances than performing precise measurements.
The researchers believe their new design could overcome these limitations. Known as a convolutional spectrometer, it uses a mathematical principle called the convolution theorem to analyze light in a fundamentally different way. According to the team, this approach delivers performance that surpasses existing types of spectrometers in several key areas, including designs based on light dispersion, Fourier transforms, and computational reconstruction.
A New Way to Analyze Light With Extraordinary Precision Traditional spectrometers generally separate incoming light into its component wavelengths or use complex calculations to reconstruct its spectrum. The new device takes another approach by performing a mathematical operation called convolution directly on the incoming light. To accomplish this, the researchers arranged optical components with repeating spectral responses in a sequence.
These components can include unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometers or micro-ring resonators. By adjusting them in proportion to one another, the system can shift its response to different wavelengths in a controlled, linear fashion. Fast Fourier transforms are then used to accurately recover the light spectrum.
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