About Light UP

Beacon fires, reflected sunlight, and lighthouses are some of the early light-assisted long distance wireless communication technologies. Nowadays, communication through light continues to play a pivotal role for mankind. People can exploit light to surf the web in a fast and inexpensive way, without any need for radio waves, thanks to optical wireless communication technology (OWC). OWC takes advantage of the large bandwidth of UV, visible, and infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum overcoming the limits of radio frequencies and allowing wireless network access in situations where radio communication is undesired for security or health hazard risk, e.g. on aircrafts, in hospitals or industrial installations. OWC technology has the potential to be easily integrated in our everyday life since every light source can become a transmitter to be connected with a photodetector and a receiver to create a bidirectional communication link. The emergence of flexible and wearable electronic applications is now posing novel challenges to OWC since clothes and even the human skin are increasingly being considered as possible supports for multifunctional applications. For this reason, ultrathin, transparent, lightweight, and stretchable devices are required in order to conform to every surface in terms of materials and shape to deliver a wide range of applications spanning the sectors of home automation, assisted living, enhanced learning, healthcare, defence, and transport, to list a few.

Light UP aims at the development of a new class of highly sensitive and wearable photodetectors with an ultrafast time response and operational bandwidth in the GHz range by exploiting emerging high-quality two-dimensional material with quantum well structure exhibiting a gamut of excellent electrical, optical and mechanical properties. Wearable ultrafast photodetectors implemented in Light UP for OWC can be transformative for the fields of assisted living, enhanced learning, healthcare, defence and security thus providing great benefit for the society.