Optoelectronic Components & Materials Group

(above) A hemispherical array photodetector is pictured above. The curved detector surface allows this device to produce an undistorted, wide field image using only a single lens. Because it shares this attribute with the human eye, a hemispherical photodetector is informally called an artifical eye.

Conventional photodector arrays are printed on flat substrates, and must be combined with multiple lenses to produce high quality images. Organic photodetectors can be grown on curved substrates, enabling fabrication of an artifical eye.

Image: X. Xu et al., Organic Electronics (Oct., 2008)

You can read about this and other projects on our research page.