Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern University have announced the development of a camera based on the biological design of the human eye. While it won’t make a 10-megapixel digital camera obsolete, it may be a huge breakthrough in bioengineering.
U of I Prof. John Rogers, the team’s head researcher, said, “This approach allows us to put electronics in places where we couldn’t before.” Researchers at Northwestern University and other academic institutions helped in the design and fabrication processes.
subhead>Artificial Sight
The development could herald an era of artificial sight. Current optical technology relies on rigid-surface, fixed electronics. While this is more than serviceable in a camera, human eyes must pivot, scan and collect a wide view of information with a flexible retina.
Such a natural design requires flexible components and nonrigid properties previously impossible to engineer. The challenge for researchers hinged on embedding light and image sensors in elastic material without breaking electronic connections or distorting images. It appears the discovery by Rogers and his team has succeeded.
To implant the electronics, the researchers first developed a rubber membrane in the hemispheric shape of an eye. The membrane was then stretched to form a drumhead. A prefabricated array of sensors embedded in silicon was then transferred using planar processing — much like current chip manufacturing. When the membrane comes off the drumhead, it returns to its original shape and compresses the embedded focal array.
The key point is that specially designed interconnects delaminate from the membrane yet maintain contact with detector pixels. The array is then transfer-printed to a glass substrate identical to the original shape. The artificial retina is then attached to an external connection and a lens is set into the assembly.
Resolution Factor
The result is the world’s first imaging device modeled on the eye. The resolution of the device…