Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation

The State University of New York

Zongfu Yu

Qiaoqiang Gan

Haomin Song

Ming Zhou

Soongyu Yi

Zhenqiang Ma

Dianjing Liu

Zhenyang Xia

Yixuan Tan

Xingze Wang

Zhejun Liu

Matthew Singer

Chenyu Li

Lyu Zhou

A passive cooler of the disclosure includes a thermal emitter having a substrate and a coating disposed on at least a portion of a first side of the substrate. The cooler has a beam guide made from a material having a high absorption to solar wavelengths and high reflectance at mid-infrared wavelengths. The beam guide is configured such that at least a portion of incident light is acted on by the beam guide before reaching the thermal emitter. In some embodiments, the beam guide has a graded optical index.

Beam-controlled spectral-selective architecture for a radiative cooler

Hyperspectral resonant cavity imaging spectrometers and imaging systems incorporating the resonant cavity spectrometers are provided. The spectrometers include an array of photodetectors based on photosensitive semiconductor nanomembranes disposed between two dielectric spacers, each of the dielectric spacers having a thickness gradient along a lateral direction, such that the resonant cavity height differs for different photodetectors in the array.

Compact hyperspectral spectrometers based on semiconductor nanomembranes

A solar vapor generator system and method are provided. In some embodiments, the system has near perfect energy conversion efficiency in the process of solar vapor generation below room temperature. Remarkably, when the operation temperature of the system is below that of the surroundings, the total vapor generation will be higher than the upper limit that can be produced by the input solar energy.

System and method for solar vapor evaporation and condensation

An apparatus for measurement of surface relief provides a phase sensitive camera and processing to reconstruct a wavefront profile matching the surface when illuminated with a known light source thereby providing noncontact surface relief measurements.

Apparatus for high-speed surface relief measurement

Disclosed herein are systems and methods for passively cooling water vapor to enable efficient condensation, and methods of making such systems. A passive cooler can include a thermally conductive substrate having a first side and a second side opposite the first side, a coating disposed on at least a portion of the first side of the substrate, and a housing having one or more insulative walls. The insulative walls may define a vapor flow channel from an inlet to an outlet of the housing such that the second side of the substrate is exposed to water vapor flowing through the vapor flow channel.

Systems and methods for passive cooling and radiator for same

A wavefront sensor system suitable for integration into an integrated circuit light detector may provide for wave angle sensors having varying functional relationships between the wave angle and signal to provide improved dynamic range. These wave angle sensors may be combined with integrated circuit phase angle sensors for a more complete analysis of the waveform.

Wavefront detector

Optoelectronic devices that use very thin single-crystalline inorganic semiconductor films as phonon-absorbing layers in combination with non-lattice optical cavities are provided.

Optoelectronic devices based on thin single-crystalline semiconductor films and non-epitaxial optical cavities

An optical field sensor is used to make phase measurements over an area of light reflected from an object outside a field of view of the light field sensor. These phase measurements are applied to a machine learning system trained with similar phase measurements from objects outside of a field of view to identify the object within a class of objects subject to the training.

Apparatus for identifying objects outside of a line-of-sight

A resonator coupled to a system exhibiting a negative phase index of refraction presents a magnified absorption cross-section providing an optical element that can be used for enhancing taggant detection or increasing photodetector efficiency.

Small-scale light absorbers with large absorption cross-sections

A spectrometer employs multiple filters having complex filter spectra that can be generated robustly from received light over short optical path lengths. The complex filter spectra provide data that can be converted to a spectrum of the received light using compressed sensing techniques. The result is a more compact, easily manufactured spectrometer.

Growing community of inventors

Madison, WI, United States of America

Zongfu Yu