Aussie research center to focus on groundbreaking optical technology

Canberra [Australia], September 29: A research facility has been opened at Australian National University (ANU) to focus on groundbreaking optical technologies.
The Australian Research Council (ARC) Center of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS) brings together world-leading researchers from five Australian universities and 20 partner organizations to revolutionize the use of light.
DragomirNeshev, TMOS director and professor in physics at ANU, said technology developed at the facility could be used to create phone screens capable of displaying lifelike holograms and allow doctors to receive real-time images from inside patients.
"The lens-based optics that are used in modern-day devices are based on concepts of light that are 3,000 years old," he said in a media release recently.
"That's why your phone is as thick as it is -- traditional lenses have to be a certain width in order to work. What we're developing are optical surfaces that replace big lenses. That's a game-changer for almost every industry."
The facility has been awarded 34.9 million Australian dollars (22.7 million U.S. dollars) in funding over the next seven years from the ARC -- the federal government's primary non-medical research funding agency.
Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic said the TMOS center would "deepen" knowledge of an area of science that "promises to have significant impact on our future way of life."
"Integrating and advancing our knowledge of light and its interaction with materials at the nanoscale is a tremendously exciting new field," he said.
Source: Xinhua