Making a miniature Sun

This project will produce devices that are capable of operating at two thirds of the temperature of the sun's surface. Micro hot plate devices will be fabricated from the Ultra High Temperature Ceramic (UHTC) Hafnium Carbide, which has a melting point above 4000 K. To put this in perspective, only three elements have higher melting points than 3300 K (W, Re and Ta). Operating these hot plates at such high temperatures will produce intense blackbody emission centred in the Near-IR with more than 1000 times the intensity of the state of the art. Such radiation is used in many industrial, medical and defence applications such as gas sensing and spectroscopy. In particular there is a new demand in mobile sensing that requires miniaturised IR light sources with broader wavelength capabilities. The proposed micro emitters are much brighter, broader wavelength and faster than what exists today and can improve the speed, precision and range of applications of existing sensing platforms.