According to a recent report by the American Physicist Organization Network, US researchers have developed a nano-optical sensor that is compatible with atomic-sized electronic circuits and has acquired a novel optical-electrical device with both optical and electrical characteristics. In a paper published in the journal Nature Photonics, the researchers stated that the study overcomes a major challenge for nanotechnology.

The research team led by Jeremy Levy, director of the Center for Oxide-Semiconductor Materials at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, and researchers from the University of Wisconsin, USA, designed this optical device that is less than 4 nanometers wide. It is possible for photons to interact with a single molecule or quantum dot-sized object.

At the same time, the researchers for the first time through the electricity of the small device to change its sensitivity to different colors of light in the visible spectrum, which may make traditional optical sensors usually required by the sensor becomes redundant.

The researchers created this optical device on a rewritable nanoelectronic platform. The nanoelectronic platform was also developed by Levi's laboratory. The core of the nanoelectronic platform is to convert an oxide crystal between insulating and conductive states. By applying a positive voltage across an electrically conductive probe sharpened by an atomic force microscope, an interface is created at the interface between two insulators, a 1.2-nanometer-thick barium aluminate implanted on a barium titanate substrate. Several nanometers wide conductive wires, and then apply a reverse voltage to the resulting conductive nanowires, will make its surface become insulator again. Levy said that this nanoelectronic platform can be used to create a high-density memory device and a transistor with a size of only two nanometers (SketchFET).

Light is very sensitive to nano-sized objects, such as individual molecules or quantum dots. However, it has always been a challenge to combine semiconductor nanowires with nanotube optical devices and other electronic circuit devices. In his latest research, Levy and colleagues found a way to integrate photosensitivity into these electronic circuits using the same technologies and materials. Levy said that the optical device thus obtained can generate, guide or detect different light waves and therefore can be applied in different fields.

Levy said that the results of these studies may allow scientists to create devices that can sense optical characteristics at the nanometer level and transmit information in the form of electricity.