From smartphones to drones, today’s devices need compact sensors that can “see” more than just visible light. Detecting both visible and infrared light is key for technologies like chemical sensing, 3D imaging, virtual and augmented reality, and even improving visibility in tough conditions like fog or bushfire smoke.
Infrared detectors already play a big role in defence, medicine, and modern industry. But current technology struggles to perform well at room temperature, which makes it harder to use in weight-sensitive platforms such as drones and space systems.
That’s where TMOS comes in. Our researchers are developing new nanowire-based devices and integrating advanced metasurfaces into detectors to make them smaller, lighter, and more powerful. We’re also unlocking new ways to capture “hidden” details in light—like its polarisation and phase—using meta-optics, giving compact sensors access to information that was once invisible.
The result? A new generation of smart, lightweight sensors ready to transform everyday devices and critical technologies alike.
TMOS researchers made exciting progress, delivering breakthroughs in imaging and detector technologies through strong cross-node collaborations.
Teams at ANU, the University of Melbourne, UWA, and UTS demonstrated new ways to capture images using advanced detectors and metasurfaces. From single-pixel and polarisation imaging to compact quantum ghost imaging systems, these projects are opening the door to faster, more powerful, and more versatile imaging methods.
Researchers also showed how these innovations can be applied beyond the lab, with progress in gas sensing and tunable materials like graphene. One major project—integrating a superpixel metalens with an imaging array—has advanced so far it is now part of the TMOS flagship program. This work is already attracting interest from defence and space sectors.
The team has laid a strong foundation, and with prototypes now in development, TMOS is moving closer to real-world impact.
Subprogram 3A – Advanced Infrared Imaging
In 2024, TMOS researchers achieved major advances in infrared (IR) detection, targeting the short-wave (SWIR) and mid-wave (MWIR) spectrum. These developments push performance benchmarks while introducing new device architectures with broad applications.
Optimised InAs/InP nanowire photodetectors delivered high-speed, broadband, and tunable SWIR detection, establishing a strong platform for future imaging systems. Meanwhile, InAs nanosheet devices achieved a remarkable dichroic ratio of 44 at 2.9 µm with stable room-temperature operation, enabling new opportunities in polarisation imaging.
A new class of InGaAs nanowire detectors reached single-photon-level sensitivity at 1310 nm, detecting signals as faint as 6.5 pW with a rapid 22 ns response, ideal for high-bandwidth and real-time applications. Further progress came from nanowire quantum well photodetectors, which demonstrated normal-incidence response at 4 µm alongside ultra-low dark current density, significantly improving signal-to-noise.
Finally, integrating gold metasurface gratings with nanowire QWIPs enabled precise wavelength demultiplexing, paving the way for more selective and tunable IR detection.
Together, these breakthroughs highlight TMOS’s role in shaping the future of infrared sensing through nanowire, nanosheet, and metasurface innovations.
Our team have also successfully developed a new type of infrared photodetector—called the nanowire QWIP—that operates in the midwave infrared range (3–5 μm). Thanks to its unique nanowire design, it can detect light from straight on (normal incidence), which is a major advancement. After careful testing at our UWA node, the device showed strong performance at 4.2 μm, with high sensitivity and low noise—paving the way for future applications in areas like thermal imaging and remote sensing.
Action Items for 2025:
- Improve InAs nanowire detectors to work at higher temperatures and scale them into imaging arrays.
- Develop advanced metasurfaces for nanowire detectors, adding new features like polarisation and OAM demultiplexing
- Test and refine the new metaMCT-Pixel detectors in collaboration with UWA, ANU, and Duke University.
Subprogram 3B – Hidden properties of light
TMOS Theme 3B is advancing the detection of light’s hidden properties—wavelength, phase, quantum states, polarisation, and angular momentum—that remain invisible to conventional detectors. Metamaterials are central to this effort, offering unprecedented control of light with applications spanning defence, space, healthcare, science, and telecommunications. Building on the success of metasurface-based isometric differential interference contrast imaging in 2023, researchers are now exploring polarisation and spectral multiplexing for advanced phase imaging.
In 2024, significant progress was made across multiple fronts. At UWA, a plasmonic filter array microspectrometer was characterised using both a micro-bolometer camera and an FTIR microscope, marking an important step toward compact hazardous agent detection. UWA also led the fabrication of MEMS-based gas sensing microspectrometers, with ongoing characterisation supported by spectral reconstruction methods from the University of Melbourne.
Breakthroughs in quantum imaging included entangled photon pair generation from nonlinear metasurfaces and progress toward single-shot 2D ghost imaging. Collaborative efforts with Jena further advanced quantum ghost imaging of phase objects. Meanwhile, teams fabricated plasmonic nanogratings for polarisation-sensitive detection, and completed filter components for an EG/SiC mid-infrared edge-detection system.
Together, these results highlight the transformative role of metasurfaces in redefining optical detection.
Action Items for 2025:
- Complete fabrication and characterisation of a laboratory prototype plasmonic filter array microspectrometer and test it for hazardous agent detection.
- Continue electrical and optical characterisation of MEMS-based gas sensing microspectrometers, using spectral reconstruction methods from the University of Melbourne.
- Conduct experiments to achieve higher-resolution quantum imaging and single-shot 2D ghost imaging with broad-angle photon emission.
- Collaborate with the University of Jena to compare metasurface-based quantum ghost imaging with conventional photon-pair sources.
- Characterise plasmonic nanogratings for polarisation-sensitive detection and prepare results for publication, with potential cross-node collaborations.
- Progress edge-detection work by refining and testing EG/SiC mid-infrared filter and detector components.
Acknowledgement of Country
The ARC Centre for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS) acknowledges the Traditional Owners and their custodianship of the lands on which our teams operate. We pay our respects to their Ancestors and their descendants, who continue cultural and spiritual connections to Country. We recognise their valuable contributions to Australian and global society.