Happy Accident Opens Door to Cheaper, Higher-Resolution Cameras

[Jim]

[size=5]Happy Accident Opens Door to Cheaper, Higher-Resolution Cameras[/size]
[size=4]By Dave Bullock
12.01.08[/size]

LOS ANGELES — Scientific accidents have brought some of the most groundbreaking discoveries — vulcanized rubber, X-rays, penicillin — and now scientists at UCLA have accidentally discovered a material that could make digital cameras as we know them obsolete.

Graduate student Hsiang-Yu Chen was working on a new formula for solar cells when something went wrong. Instead of creating electricity when hit with light, the conductivity of the material she was working with changed.

"The original purpose [was] to make a solar cell more efficient," says Chen. "However, during the research we found the solar cell phenomenon [had] disappeared." Instead, the test material showed high gain photoconductivity, indicating potential use as a photo sensor.

Thanks to this lucky mistake, a new breed of camera sensors that are cheaper, higher-resolution and have lower distortion could be on the horizon. Click through the gallery to learn how this new breakthrough works and tour the labs where the magic happens.


[[url=\"http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/12/gallery_photodetector\"]Source and Images[/url]]

[Tami]

<img src=\'http://www.killanet.net/forum3/public/s ... >/ohmy.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':o\' />


<img src=\'http://www.killanet.net/forum3/public/s ... /yahoo.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\'(yahoo)\' />

...of course, that will probably be decades away <img src=\'http://www.killanet.net/forum3/public/s ... #>/cry.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':(\' />