IR Thermometer- one of the weapons against COVID-19

Coronavirus is a zoonotic disease that allows human to human transmission and raised global health concerns. Common symptoms due to this virus are cough, tiredness, cold and fever. No any particular vaccine is available to prevent this spread. The sudden rise in number of coronavirus cases has caused the nations across the globe to take steps to stop the spread. For this, there has been a need of checking body temperatures regularly. In such cases, mercury thermometers are not used. So, it is advisable to use forehead thermometers known as infrared (IR) thermometers.

Infrared thermometers are used to detect body temperature by not contacting the patient’s body. It checks the human temperature by sensing the infrared energy radiated by the body. Infrared sensor detectors are of two types-

• Photon detector- radiation absorption process directly produces measurable effect i.e. provides reading on screen
• Thermal detector- first convert absorbed incident radiation into heat and then produce measurable effect.

   

   Photon detectors consist of materials which are difficult to grow and fabricate and hence are not much effective. Pyroelectric, bolometer, thermopiles are the sensors belong to the category of thermal detectors. Pyroelectric materials have much higher responsivity and specific detectivity, which is not preferable. Most of the companies manufacture thermopile based thermometers. The sensitivity of this sensor depends upon photosensitive area. Whereas bolometric detectors are independent of photosensitive area, which is its plus point. These detectors show high performance in lower cost. Bolometric materials have large temperature coefficient to resistance ratio (TCR) and low noise equivalent power (NEP) and because of these properties, they are preferred to be used in IR thermometers. 

   Infrared bolometric detectors operated at room temperature offer a large number of competitive advantages in terms of cost, operational convenience, higher reliability, reduced power consumption, small footprint and reduced weight. 

Is coronavirus exposing your smartphone's privacy?

In many countries, officials are looking that how smartphones can be utilised in the war against pandemic COVID-19. Health officials are making use of smartphones to contact and approach the persons having a possibility of corona virus symptoms. This can be done by accessing our devices which stores a wealth of private data.

European commission has requested the information from the mobile operators, which can enable them to determine the location of users by measuring signal strength from more than one tower. Even the Google plans to publish the information about the movement of people and social distancing measures, so as to allow the government to have access over it.

Singapore and India is using a method of Bluetooth. In this, someone who has downloaded this app and kept their Bluetooth enabled will begin to register codes from all the nearby people who are having the same app on the phones. This app doesn’t track your location but it collect codes from the mobile phones. If any person declare himself as COVID-19 patient, then this tracker app matches the codes of nearby areas and messages them about COVID-19 patient.

Privacy International and Human Rights watched all this and warned that this increase in state digital surveillance powers such as obtaining access to mobile phone location and data, has threatens privacy of public. Not only this, it restricts the freedom of expression and freedom of association. In this way, it is been violating the rights and degrading the trust of public. They also added that, “we cannot allow the COVID-19 pandemic to serve as a excuse to gut individual’s right to privacy.”  

Time to replace silicon from microchips

After the decades of progress, the revolutionary path of silicon is seems to be at its end. Silicon has some limitations like we cannot go beyond the scale of 10nm. So, to accelerate its pace, there is a need of some other materials. 2-D layered materials prove as a replaceable option in this case. These materials offer unique electrical, optical, chemical and mechanical properties. In addition, they are also having extensive scalability.

Graphene, the first two-dimensional (2D) material with excellent electronic, optical and mechanical properties has given birth to research on several other 2D materials. The absence of band gap in graphene and other challenges related to its stability makes its dealing difficult for scientists. More recently, the family of transition family dichalcogenides like Molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) has received a lot of attention and it opens a door for future nanoelectronics.

MoS₂ can miniature the silicon microchip. In a 0.65 nm thin sheet of MoS₂, the electrons can move around as quickly as in a 2 nm thick sheet of Si. So, decreasing of thickness and size is one of its advantages. Reduced electricity consumption and mechanical flexibility are other advantages. MoS₂ seems to be a better alternative than Si for transistors manufacturing. MoS₂ is also being used in the fabrication of solar cells and LED which leads that this material may have significant future possibilities for various field of electronics and futuristic gadgets.

          MoS₂ has all the important properties of silicon with some additional applications of ultra thin layer structure which allows the channelling of scale down to 2nm and therefore, it dominates over silicon in technology world. It can be said that MoS₂ can be game changer in the future of nanoelectronics.

Coolest experiment of universe

What is the coldest place on earth? The answer will be Antartica, which is having coldest temperature of -85°C. Next question will be, what is the coldest place of universe? It will be dark side of moon, whose temperature is near about -173°C. In NASA’s Cold Atom Lab (CAL), the scientists are creating something like this. 

           The scientists are trying to achieve the absolute zero temperature i.e. -273°C. At this temperature, they will produce clouds of ‘ultracold’ atoms, which will facilitate further researches. But the question arises what is the need to produce ultracold atoms at absolute zero temperature? The answer is to study the quantum physics.. classically.

           Ultracold atoms moves with very lesser speed. This speed is 2 lakh times slower than the speed of atoms at room temperature. This will helps to study atoms and as well as other physical phenomena. This study will helps to understand the workings of nature at the fundamental levels. This experiment will build a foundation of a cold atom science in space.It will make possible to study about the energy, position and momentum accurately at same time. Hence, this will make possible to study quantum at newtonian level.

          The major problem faced by the scientists is that, on the ground, because of the gravitational pull of earth, the ultracold clouds of atom fall off quickly and this gives only a fraction of second to observe them. Magnetic fields can also be used to trap the atoms but this too restricts their natural movement. The only possibility to observe ultracold clouds is to reduce the effect of gravity.