Gas Leaks Could be Identified by Wearable Sensors

Gas Accidents such as Toxic Gas Leaks in factories, carbon monoxide leakage of boilers, or toxic gas suffocation during manhole cleaning continue to claim lives and cause injuries. The development or the instilling of a sensor that can swiftly detect toxic gases is still an issue for public health officials. Recently, addressing the concern, a team of researchers at POSTECH has developed an inexpensive, ultra-compact wearable hologram sensor that immediately sends the users the notification of violation gas detection.

A joint research team led by Professor Junsuk Rho of departments of mechanical and chemical engineering and Dr. Inki Kim of Department of Mechanical Engineering with Professor Young-Ki Kim and Ph.D. candidate Won-Sik Kim of Department of Chemical Engineering at POSTECH has integrated metasurface with gas-reactive liquid crystal optical modulator. Alongside, it has instilled a detector that provides an immediate visual holographic alarm when harmful gases are traced or identified.

The invention of a sensor became inevitable for people working in hazardous places such as petrochemical plants, fire gauging manufacturers, combustion industries, and so on. However, conventional gas sensors are not being used worldwide due to their high-cost mobility, which is made up of complex machines and electronic devices.

To solve these issues, the research team utilized the metasurface, well known as a future optical device known to have the invisible cloak effect through making visible objects disappear by controlling the refractive index of light. The metasurface is emphatically used to transmit two-way holograms of 3D graphic images by freely controlling light.Using the technique,  the researchers developed a gas sensor that can float a holographic alarm in space in just a matter of seconds which is utilized with the help of transmitted controlled light.