Breakthrough Leads To World’s First Flexible, Flat, Fully Transparent Image Sensor

Imaging sensors are typically rigid and opaque, but a team of scientists from Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria has developed a new imager based on a flat, flexible, transparent and potentially disposable polymer sheet.

“To our knowledge, we are the first to present an image sensor that is fully transparent – no integrated microstructures, such as circuits – and is flexible and scalable at the same time,” said Oliver Bimber, who co-authored a report on the device that was recently published in the journal Optics Express.

The imager uses a polymer film known as a luminescent concentrator, which is permeated with small fluorescent particles that can absorb a particular wavelength of light and then re-emit it at a longer wavelength. For example, it can absorb blue light and re-emit green light.

While some of the re-emitted light is scattered out of the imager, a portion of it travels to the film’s outer edges where it is captured by arrays of optical sensors. The sensors then send information to a computer that creates a gray-scale image.