It's a nerve-wracking countdown to the most important day of many women's life: her wedding day. She chews her fingers and fidgets anxiously as butterflies flutter in her stomach. Everyone in the room is sent into frenzy. She is adamant her bridesmaids' dresses are a fairytale Tiffany blue. Yet, nobody has managed to find that exact shade.
She wants to pull apart her perfectly coiffed hair and scream.
Now, with UB researchers' rainbow polymer, the bride could end all her frustrations with a click of her cellphone.
The rainbow polymer, also known as the everyday spectrometer, is a rainbow-colored light filter that enables one to identify the "true color," or wavelength compositions, of objects. Thanks to its uniquely compact size and low production cost, the invention could be integrated with portable devices like cellphones, making spectroscopic analysis handy and accessible.
Users could pick out the wavelengths that make up Tiffany blue with a cellphone equipped with the invention and find the exact color match using the data. Voila, problem solved. Wedding preparation can go on without a bride's transformation into a Bridezilla.
Apart from simple color matching, the technology has many other potential uses. People could use these cellphones to recognize counterfeit money and fresh groceries. It also has important applications relating to health sciences, in which scientists could use cellphone-based microscopes integrated with the rainbow polymer to analyze colors in biological imaging. This allows for convenient and inexpensive diagnostics in poorer countries.
The novelty of the rainbow polymer is it enables the bulky spectrometer to be reduced down to something that "you can have in your hand," according to Alexander Cartwright, one of the two inventors who headed the research team. Cartwright is also a professor of electrical engineering and biomedical engineering and vice president for research and economic development.
Small and easy to make, the rainbow polymer is an elegant solution to portability issues of current market products. Also, it is economical ? each filter could cost less than $10 to produce, as compared to counterparts that cost over a few hundred dollars, according to researchers. The invention's size and price allows it to be made accessible to regular people and have extensive applications in wide-ranging fields.
The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) has listed it as one of five "innovations that could change the way you manufacture" of 2013.
Inventors of the rainbow polymer, Cartwright and Qiaoqiang Gan, assistant professor of electrical engineering, take pride in their work and are honored to receive such commendation from SME.
"This reflects that people appreciate such a low-cost [technology] which can equip our daily electronics with more powerful functions," Gan said. "We appreciate that and are encouraged to push this technology further."
Cartwright also thinks his collaboration with Gan has been a fruitful one because it results in diverse opinions that are essential to problem-solving and research efforts.
"If [you] keep doing the same thing, you won't know if you'll ever get the problem solved," Cartwright said. "Different perspectives really give you a different view of how to solve problems."
The Office of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach (STOR) is helping to make the rainbow polymer into a market product. Such efforts would be supported by a SUNY Technology Accelerator Fund award the invention received last year, according to UB News.
Qingyang Liu, a graduate student doing electrical engineering, is optimistic about bringing the rainbow polymer into the market.
"The new invention could be integrated with portable devices to make spectroscopic analysis [because of] its uniquely compact size and low production cost," Liu said in an email. "It has many potential applications and it will be widely used in the future."
Cartwright, a researcher who has worked with many undergraduate and graduate students since coming to UB in 1995, has advice for students who are looking into doing research: Take initiative.
"What I encourage students to do is: Don't be shy to go and talk to a professor about the research they're doing," Cartwright said. "Faculty [members] are at the university because we enjoy working with students ? that's what we love."
The two inventors are currently working on fine-tuning the rainbow polymer to optimize its performance and make it market-ready. After all, it is never too soon to have a handheld spectrometer, especially when it comes to creating the perfect wedding day.
Email: news@ubspectrum.com
