Are safety and environmental factors being consideration here? Putting thin films of some mercury compound into consumer electronics doesn't sound great, and is probably already banned by regulations like RoHS.
As someone who works with THz I can assure you that nobody has thought of environmental factors as these technologies are far from being implemented in any consumer or industrial device - as stated in the article, this is fundamental science. If you go to the THz conference or PW all you will get is academic papers. The applications are certainly very interesting given the nearly unlimited bandwidth available in the THz regime and the fact that it's unlicensed, but we are far away from any kind of real implementation despite decades of articles like these.
Actual applications at the moment are mostly imaging, the 'nudie scanners' at airports and THz imaging at various frequencies is in use for food inspection as it can easily show blemishes/defects in produce that would otherwise be invisible. I read a paper once on detecting counterfeit money. Analysis of airborne contaminants / weather prediction are other possible applications. For telecom it has been considered (at very early stages) for 6G due to the huge bandwidth available. Really there are a lot of 'possible' applications but implementing them has proven difficult either because it requires advancements in materials or other risky aspects or because it's beaten by existing technologies at the moment.
This is so far out of my expertise that I have nothing to add to the actual topic, but I must say that the veritable forest of beam mirrors, splitters and whatnots looks fascinating. It reminds me a bit of the early integrated circuit research where people had similar forests of transistors.
Are safety and environmental factors being consideration here? Putting thin films of some mercury compound into consumer electronics doesn't sound great, and is probably already banned by regulations like RoHS.
As someone who works with THz I can assure you that nobody has thought of environmental factors as these technologies are far from being implemented in any consumer or industrial device - as stated in the article, this is fundamental science. If you go to the THz conference or PW all you will get is academic papers. The applications are certainly very interesting given the nearly unlimited bandwidth available in the THz regime and the fact that it's unlicensed, but we are far away from any kind of real implementation despite decades of articles like these.
What are some of the things THz would be good for?
Actual applications at the moment are mostly imaging, the 'nudie scanners' at airports and THz imaging at various frequencies is in use for food inspection as it can easily show blemishes/defects in produce that would otherwise be invisible. I read a paper once on detecting counterfeit money. Analysis of airborne contaminants / weather prediction are other possible applications. For telecom it has been considered (at very early stages) for 6G due to the huge bandwidth available. Really there are a lot of 'possible' applications but implementing them has proven difficult either because it requires advancements in materials or other risky aspects or because it's beaten by existing technologies at the moment.
Great point: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/30/toxin-le...
This is, morbidly, from crematorium emissions. Now imagine if that was the output of every electronics section of the local recycling centre/dumps.
The problem is if a particular material becomes the golden goose and companies won't avoid it if there is a perceived/real advantage.
This is so far out of my expertise that I have nothing to add to the actual topic, but I must say that the veritable forest of beam mirrors, splitters and whatnots looks fascinating. It reminds me a bit of the early integrated circuit research where people had similar forests of transistors.