Radiation Technique To Guide Us To Systems Similar To Star Trek "Tricorders"

Nanotechnology has been brought to use by the Imperial College London and Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) scientists, which can produce stronger guiding beams of T-rays, employed in full-body scanners, and give rise to them at room temperature. Scientists believe that this could be used to develop smaller and cheaper T-ray systems in the future, which can be operated more easily that the ones currently available. These handheld systems are supposedly similar to the Star Trek tricorders. #-Link-Snipped-#
T-rays are electromagnetic waves employed in security scanners for determining the existence of explosives or drugs and systems that use spectrographic analysis of materials and non-damaging trialling of microchips. Biological phenomena like raised blood flow near a tumor can also be detected by this technique. Present techniques to create T-rays demand very low temperature and high energy intake, and are quite expensive. The new technique requires a  nanoscale antenna that magnifies the T-rays as they are brought to existence. This is worked using two metal electrodes spaced by a 100nm gap on a semiconductor wafer that employs light pulses and a strong current to produce the desired radiation.


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The Star Trek tricorder
Manufacturing the antenna called for a method known as electron beam lithography to create the very small gaps in the electrodes, and the scientists were also looking for a way through which they can mass-produce them. This could be achieved with nano-imprint lithography.