Current digital cameras routinely cram more than 10 million pixels into an image, but have not overcome the long-standing problem of distortion created by a flat imager. Conventional sensors cannot bend without damaging light-sensitive pixels -- the semiconductor wafers in which they are embedded are rigid and brittle, fracturing at strains of less than one percent. Rogers and Huang overcame these limitations by linking the fragile light-sensitive pixels with tiny, flexible wires which can bend by as much a 40 percent. This electronic mesh was fitted against a rubber membrane stretched into the curved shape of a retina, and then transferred to a hemispherical glass dome of the same shape, creating the camera lens. "This research is truly transformative," said Ken Chong, an advisor in the National Science Foundation Engineering Directorate, which funded the study. "Using simple mechanics principles, the researchers have produced, for the first time, electronic devices on a hemispherical surface so that they can take images much like those captured by the human eye," he said in a statement. In a commentary, also published in Nature, Takao Someya of the University of Tokyo said the new technology "heralds the advent of new classes of imaging devices with wide-angle fields of view, low distortion and compact size." Related Links: |
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