MID-TECH

The mid-infrared (mid-IR) wavelength range is an emerging and important new topic for frontier research. Its general importance relates to a multitude of mid-IR industrial and biomedical sensor applications. Chemical finger prints of most complex molecules such as those found in food, tissue or catalytic compounds all have vibrational spectra in the mid-IR, thus identifiable through mid-IR spectroscopy. Incidentally, also the fundamental absorption bands of gas molecules are located in the mid-IR enabling novel instrumentation for mid-IR gas spectroscopy at small concentrations relevant for applications like "leak-tests" or remote sensing of greenhouse gases... The main obstacle for the exploitation of the mid-IR optical window has been a historical lack of efficient mid-IR excitation light sources and sensitive mid-IR detectors/imaging devices. In Mid-TECH we have gathered the best European academic and industrial partners to show that in a combined effort, both technological short..