Your entire laptop screen can become a sensor

The list of applications for eye-tracking technology has grown long in recent years with virtual reality and augmented reality devices, systems that make driving safer and more efficient, hands-free control of computers and assistive communication devices, and detection of diseases.

Gaze tracking today relies on bulky, opaque silicon-based image sensors mounted at an angle, away from the user’s direct line of sight to avoid distraction. Now a team of researchers from The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology and Barcelona-based startup Qurv Technologies have made flexible, nearly transparent image sensors that could be hidden in plain sight.

“You could have phones or laptops where the entire screen is a sensor to detect hand movements. Mirrors or shop windows could have smart sensors and cameras integrated into the glass to sense human gestures.” —Frank Koppens, Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology

To make semi-transparent image sensors, Koppens, Qurv Chief Technology Officer Stijn Goossens and their colleagues combined the properties of two nanomaterials. Atoms-thick graphene is an excellent conductor, and is also very good at converting photons into electrons and positively charged holes. But it absorbs very little light. On the other hand, quantum dots, which are semiconductor nanocrystals, are excellent light absorbers.

So the team deposited graphene on a clear quartz substrate, and then coated it with an ultra-thin layer of quantum dots just a few tens of nanometers thick. The quantum dots absorb photons and pass them on to the graphene, which converts them into voltage.

Find the full report here and the direct link to https://www.qurv.tech