The exponential growing demand for wireless data traffic requires new technologies to overcome the limited bandwidth of the radio frequency spectrum. Nowadays, people can exploit light to surf the web in a fast and inexpensive way, without any need for radio waves, thanks to optical wireless communication technology (OWC). OWC take advantage from the large bandwidth of UV-Vis-IR regions of electromagnetic spectrum overcoming the limits of radio frequencies and allowing wireless network access in situations where radio communication is undesired for security or health hazard risk, e.g. on aircrafts, in hospitals or industrial installations. OWC is now ready for the next engineering challenge that is the development of ultrathin, transparent, lightweight, and stretchable OWC components for wearable applications, for which significant step forward are needed. Substantial advances must be made in materials design and device fabrication in order to meet the technological requirements dictated from unconventional device supports such as clothes, mechanically flexible design materials and even human skin. Therefore, one of the main challenges in this field is to develop a new generation of photodetectors with high performance in terms of detection speed, efficiency, stretchability and mechanical flexibility. Traditional bulk semiconductors are not suitable for this application since they are rigid and cannot easily conform to flexible and stretchable substrates, limiting the full exploitation of OWC technology. At the same time, the poor optical and electrical properties of mechanically flexible organic materials cannot support the development of competitive OWC.
Light UP has the ambition to transform the scenario of wearable OWC technologies by developing a conceptually new class of highly sensitive and wearable photodetectors with an expected time response as fast as a few tens of picoseconds, corresponding to an operational bandwidth in the GHz range, greatly surpassing any rivalling present wearable technology. This breakthrough exploit high-quality hybrid two-dimensional material with quantum well structure implemented in devices with optimized geometry. This emerging class of materials hold great potential due to their gamut of electrical, optical and mechanical properties that can be customized at will trough a straightforward and effective solution-phase synthetic approach toward the demonstration of wearable ultrafast photodetectors for OWC.
Such an ambitious objective is not only justified by fundamental scientific interest but also by the impact that could offer in several fields including assisted living, enhanced learning, healthcare, defence and security thus providing great benefit for people aged 60 and over with chronic disease, pregnant women, kids, and more in general for the vast majority of population groups. For example, wearable ultrafast photodetectors implemented with Light UP methodologies have all the potentialities to find application in OWC for health care enabling the development of nearly imperceptible and comfortable health monitoring through wearable devices optically connected excluding the risk of interference with sensitive equipment, as in case of radio waves.
