Terahertz wave illuminator developed in Japan to penetrate fire smoke

Japan's Tokyo University Science and NTT announced in March 17, 2016 that it has developed a basic technology to ensure the visibility of terahertz lighting in a smoke environment. It has been proved that the matrix type illuminator, which is used to test the principle, can obtain the terahertz image of the 1.4m object in the simulated fire environment with the naked eye visibility almost zero.

Terahertz wave characteristics (Figure: Tokyo University Science)

Is located in the terahertz frequency between electromagnetic waves and light waves, is greater than the wavelength of infrared and visible light, therefore, even in the spread of dust, smoke and fire, also basically no scattering and attenuation. In addition, compared with the wave, the terahertz wave is not easy to spread around, can be used to view the shape of the object. In the use of terahertz imaging, passive imaging technology of thermal radiation industry early in the study by measuring the object from the image, but at the scene of the fire, high temperature materials and high temperature smoke around has become a heat radiation source, therefore unable to obtain a clear image.

The development of terahertz lighting (Figure: Tokyo University Science)

The sample of the photographed (Photography: Tokyo University Science)

Terahertz wave illuminator using this development can be realized by the observer is a active imaging, THz wave, reflected wave objects according to "see" the smoke or the opposite situation. By deliberately disrupting the wavelength of 360 m THz wave phase, focusing on multiple components of the terahertz wave, improve the intensity, can use the same as the camera flash. For the verification of the principle of trial and error of the matrix type of lighting consists of 9 components.

Schematic diagram of terahertz wave illuminator (Figure: Tokyo University Science)

Terahertz images (up) and infrared images (Cs) under various aerosol concentrations (below).

The distance between the object and the object is 85cm. (Photography: Tokyo University Science)

In the future, from the angle of building fire safety engineering, to verify the performance of the development of the terahertz wave illumination device, promote increased R & D penetration distance, reduce system size etc.. The research results will be published in March 19 to 22 at the sixty-third session of the Japan Society of Applied Physics in academic lecture "from 16 to May and 17 held the" Heisei 28 year Japan Fire Research Institute conference.

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