{"id":241831,"date":"2026-07-30T04:13:42","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T09:13:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/tiny-infrared-chip-could-improve-detection-of-gases-and-heat"},"modified":"2026-07-30T04:13:42","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T09:13:42","slug":"tiny-infrared-chip-could-improve-detection-of-gases-and-heat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/tiny-infrared-chip-could-improve-detection-of-gases-and-heat","title":{"rendered":"Tiny infrared chip could improve detection of gases and heat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/tiny-infrared-chip-could-improve-detection-of-gases-and-heat.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Infrared cameras can be used to spot useful information that our eyes can\u2019t see, such as gases escaping from a pipeline, chemicals in the atmosphere, or heat leaking from a building. But sensing infrared light in sophisticated ways still requires expensive and bulky systems.<\/p>\n<p>Now MIT researchers have created a chip-based optical device that can dynamically control incoming infrared light, to act as a tunable lens that gathers additional information for infrared cameras. Each microscopic pixel of the device\u2019s lens can control infrared light independently, allowing it to change its focus and help cameras detect different signals without moving parts.<\/p>\n<p>The system is described in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-026-75346-5\" target=\"_blank\">paper published in <em>Nature Communications<\/em><\/a>. The researchers also explain how they built a lab-scale demonstration using mostly conventional manufacturing processes in a semiconductor chip factory, suggesting the approach could be implemented at industrial scales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Infrared cameras can be used to spot useful information that our eyes can\u2019t see, such as gases escaping from a pipeline, chemicals in the atmosphere, or heat leaking from a building. But sensing infrared light in sophisticated ways still requires expensive and bulky systems. Now MIT researchers have created a chip-based optical device that can [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1523],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-computing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241831","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\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241831\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}