Are safety and environmental factors being consideration here? Putting thin films of some mercury compound into consumer electronics doesn't sound great, and is probably already banned by regulations like RoHS.
As someone who works with THz I can assure you that nobody has thought of environmental factors as these technologies are far from being implemented in any consumer or industrial device - as stated in the article, this is fundamental science. If you go to the THz conference or PW all you will get is academic papers. The applications are certainly very interesting given the nearly unlimited bandwidth available in the THz regime and the fact that it's unlicensed, but we are far away from any kind of real implementation despite decades of articles like these.
This is so far out of my expertise that I have nothing to add to the actual topic, but I must say that the veritable forest of beam mirrors, splitters and whatnots looks fascinating. It reminds me a bit of the early integrated circuit research where people had similar forests of transistors.
Are safety and environmental factors being consideration here? Putting thin films of some mercury compound into consumer electronics doesn't sound great, and is probably already banned by regulations like RoHS.
As someone who works with THz I can assure you that nobody has thought of environmental factors as these technologies are far from being implemented in any consumer or industrial device - as stated in the article, this is fundamental science. If you go to the THz conference or PW all you will get is academic papers. The applications are certainly very interesting given the nearly unlimited bandwidth available in the THz regime and the fact that it's unlicensed, but we are far away from any kind of real implementation despite decades of articles like these.
What are some of the things THz would be good for?
Great point: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/30/toxin-le...
This is, morbidly, from crematorium emissions. Now imagine if that was the output of every electronics section of the local recycling centre/dumps.
The problem is if a particular material becomes the golden goose and companies won't avoid it if there is a perceived/real advantage.
This is so far out of my expertise that I have nothing to add to the actual topic, but I must say that the veritable forest of beam mirrors, splitters and whatnots looks fascinating. It reminds me a bit of the early integrated circuit research where people had similar forests of transistors.