Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University (both in Cambridge, MA), the University of California, Riverside (Riverside, CA), and the Army Research Laboratory (Adelphi, MA) have experimentally demoed a graphene-based thermal imager that could lead to a flexible, transparent, and low-cost commercial infrared vision system.1 The noise-equivalent temperature difference of the device was less than 100 mK.
Tomás Palacios, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, and colleagues integrated graphene photothermoelectric detectors with micromachined silicon nitride (SiN) membranes to make their device. Testing showed it could be used to detect a person's heat signature at room temperature without cryogenic cooling. The researchers say that a thermal sensor could be based on a single layer of graphene (no SiN), which would make it transparent and flexible. Also, manufacturing could be simplified, which would bring costs down.
REFERENCE:
1. Allen L. Hsu et al., Nano Letters (2015); doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b01755