Share
Our world would be lost without light. The human eye detects visible light which allows us to see the color and size of objects. But invisible light, like infrared radiation, that our eyes can’t see and is emitted by food, drugs, and other materials, can be filled with hidden information on chemical composition. Possessing the super-vision to detect this light would therefore prove invaluable in many industries such as the agri-food sector. MantiSpectra – a TU/e spin-off company – is developing innovative spectral sensing devices to measure and decode these invisible light signals.
Spectrometers collect light, break it apart, and tease valuable information from it. Here, “light” could be the visible light our eyes detect or invisible electromagnetic waves like infrared radiation, which is used in optical communications and also produced by chemical reactions in crops and in stars like our Sun.
Date Time
MantiSpectra: Seeing more with invisible light
Our world would be lost without light. The human eye detects visible light which allows us to see the color and size of objects. But invisible light, like infrared radiation, that our eyes can’t see and is emitted by food, drugs, and other materials, can be filled with hidden information on chemical composition. Possessing the super-vision to detect this light would therefore prove invaluable in many industries such as the agri-food sector. MantiSpectra – a TU/e spin-off company – is developing innovative spectral sensing devices to measure and decode these invisible light signals.
Innovation industries invest in new optical spectroscopy start-up
By shining an infrared light on, for example, a tomato, you can see whether it is ripe. Part of the light is reflected. Another part is absorbed. If we collect enough data, you can use that light to see how many sugars the tomato has, says Maurangelo Petruzzella, Managing Director and co-founder of MantiSpectra. The company, a recent spin-off from Eindhoven University of Technology, has received an investment of Innovation Industries and PhotonDelta.
MantiSpectra is developing an innovative near infrared (NIR) spectrometer technology using photonic integrated chips. Spectrometers can measure the chemical composition of a sample by using light. Current solutions tend to be bulky, expensive and need to be operated in labs by well-trained personnel. By using photonic integrated chips (PICs), MantiSpectra is able to make them cheaper, smaller and easier to use, making the technology accessible to a wide range of appl