The session was organized and chaired by experts Charles A. Schmuttenmaer, professor of chemistry at Yale, and Xi-Cheng Zhang, professor and director of the Center for Terahertz Research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Twelve speakers introduced analytic applications of terahertz spectroscopy to the analytical chemistry community.
T-rays are based on the terahertz (THz) region of the electromagnetic spectrum that is between infrared light and microwave radiation. Until recently, researchers have had great difficulty harnessing the potential of the THz region for lack of suitable radiation sources. Advanced materials research has provided new and higher power sources, and interest in THz sensing and imaging has exploded as a result.
Objects at room temperature emit thermal energy in the THz range that can be used to sense and image objects. A particular advantage of T-ray systems is that they can also give spectroscopic information about the composition of chemical and biological material, and are safer for biological applications than X-ray photons, that emit a million times more energy.
Advances presented allow sensing of extremely small objects on the nanometer scale, as well as at large distances of more than 100 meters -- an essential improvement for national security applications such as remote sensing of explosives. In conjunction with NASA, THz imaging has also successfully detected defects in space shuttle foam. Other T-ray applications could enable the label-free characterization of genetic material, detect a C-4 explosive hidden in
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Contact: Janet Rettig Emanuel
janet.emanuel@yale.edu
230-432-2157
Yale University
6-Dec-2005