Researchers develop chip that turns your smartphone into a projector

Researchers at California Institute of Technology
(Caltech) have developed a new 'light-bending
silicon chip' which could help users give
presentations that are projected on a conference
room wall via your cell phone!
The new chip eliminates the need of expensive
and bulky lens used in traditional projectors. Ali
Hajimiri and his team were able to bypass
traditional optics by manipulating the coherence
of light - a property that allows the researchers
to "bend" the light waves on the surface of the
chip without lenses or the use of any mechanical
movement.
“This chip uses a so-called integrated optical
phased array (OPA) to project the image
electronically with only a single laser diode as
light source and no mechanically moving parts,”
explained Ali Hajimiri, Thomas G. Myers professor
of electrical engineering at Caltech. “By changing
the relative timing of the waves, you can change
the direction of the light beam,” Hajimiri added.
“The new thing about our work is really that we
can do this on a tiny, one-millimeter-square
silicon chip. We can do it very rapidly to form
images since we phase-shift electronically in two
dimensions,” said Behrooz Abiri, a graduate
student in Hajimiri’s team.
“In the future, this can be incorporated into a cell
phone. Since there is no need for a lens, you can
have a phone that acts as a projector all by
itself,” Hajimiri told the gathering at the Optical
Fiber Communication (OFC) conference in San
Francisco recently.
Researchers are developing new devices with
smartphones to make our lives easier. Recently a
team of researchers from University of Houston
have developed a disease diagnostic system
based on nanotechnology that will only require a
smartphone and a Rs 1200 lens attachment to
check for diseases. The tool will assist healthcare
providers by giving them an affordable and easy
to read method to diagnose diseases.