A tiny chip that can help us see deeper into space

A new imaging system could help us see deeper than ever into the universe. The same powerful technology could also help us analyze the chemical composition of everyday materials such as foods and medicines much more quickly and with greater precision than current methods.

In a study published in the journal NatureResearchers at Tsinghua University in China have introduced a small device called RAFAEL (Reconfigurable, Adaptive, Fast and Efficient Lithium-Niobate Spectro-Imager) that uses advanced photonics to capture light in exceptional detail at high speed.

RAFAEL is designed to significantly improve spectroscopy, the technique used to study the physical structure and chemical composition of matter. It’s used for everything from mapping deep space to finding contaminants in water and diagnosing diseases, and it works by breaking down the light coming from an object and analyzing the different colors (wavelengths). Although incredibly powerful, traditional spectrometers often face a trade-off: to get very fine detail, you must block out a lot of the light. Or if you let in a lot of light, you lose resolution or sensitivity.

Researchers solved this problem by creating the RAFAEL chip, which replaces large, complex laboratory instruments with a tiny integrated system. They placed a layer of lithium niobate (a synthetic crystal known for its unique optical properties) on a standard camera chip. By applying a voltage, the system instantly changes the behavior of each pixel so that each encodes different wavelengths of light. Then, powerful computer algorithms instantly decode the encoded image into an ultra-clear image.

RAFAËL Essays

The team put RAFAEL through several performance tests to demonstrate its capabilities. In one, it achieved maximum clarity while capturing 73.2% of light, making it twice as effective as the best comparable imagers. They also integrated the chip with a commercial lens and pointed it at a region of the night sky. In a single, short exposure, it captured the high-resolution spectra of 5,600 stars, proving that it can map the universe thousands of times faster and with greater sensitivity than existing instruments.

“RAFAEL breaks the inherent trade-off between sensitivity, spectral resolution and observation efficiency, paving the way for high-performance yet integrated instantaneous spectroscopy,” the researchers wrote in their paper.

Despite its impressive performance, RAFAEL is still only a laboratory prototype and is not yet ready for use. Before it can be integrated into real-world devices, researchers aim to improve computing efficiency and reduce overall system cost.

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