{"id":234536,"date":"2026-04-03T03:24:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T08:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/engineers-improve-infrared-devices-using-century-old-materials"},"modified":"2026-04-03T03:24:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T08:24:17","slug":"engineers-improve-infrared-devices-using-century-old-materials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/engineers-improve-infrared-devices-using-century-old-materials","title":{"rendered":"Engineers improve infrared devices using century-old materials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/engineers-improve-infrared-devices-using-century-old-materials2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>After decades of intense research, surprises in the realm of semiconductors\u2014materials used in microchips to control electrical currents\u2014are few and far between. But with a pair of published papers, materials engineers at Stanford University debut a promising approach to using a well-studied semiconductor to improve infrared light-emitting diodes and sensors. They say the approach could lead to smaller, sleeker, and less expensive infrared technologies for environmental, medical, and industrial uses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe taught an old dog new tricks,\u201d said senior author Kunal Mukherjee, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the Stanford School of Engineering, putting the work\u2019s importance in perspective. \u201cThe so-called IV\u2013VI materials we\u2019re working with\u2014lead selenide and lead tin selenide\u2014are more than a hundred years old. They are among the oldest semiconductors historically recorded. We found a way to integrate them with modern technology to produce a new type of infrared diode and to control the infrared light in important ways.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The new diode emits infrared light in a desirable range of longer wavelengths (4,000\u20135,000 nanometers) good for sensing gas in the air (think greenhouse gases in the sky) or in medical settings (think carbon dioxide meters).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After decades of intense research, surprises in the realm of semiconductors\u2014materials used in microchips to control electrical currents\u2014are few and far between. But with a pair of published papers, materials engineers at Stanford University debut a promising approach to using a well-studied semiconductor to improve infrared light-emitting diodes and sensors. They say the approach could [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1523,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-computing","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}