[News] Tsinghua University Unveils “Yuheng,” the World’s First Sub-Ångström Snapshot Spectral Imaging Chip

On October 15, a research team led by Professor Fang Lu from the Department of Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua University announced the successful development of “Yuheng,” the world’s first sub-ångström snapshot spectral imaging chip. The breakthrough has been published online in the prestigious journal Nature.

The Yuheng chip introduces an innovative reconfigurable computational optical imaging architecture, integrating random interference masks and lithium niobate electro-optic materials. It achieves sub-ångström spectral resolution and tens-of-megapixel spatial resolution across the 400–1000 nm wavelength range. Measuring only 2 cm × 2 cm × 0.5 cm, the chip stands out for its ability to capture full-spectrum and full-spatial information simultaneously in a single snapshot, representing a 100-fold improvement in resolution and overcoming the long-standing trade-off between spectral resolution and imaging throughput.

Yuheng is said to not only break new ground in resolution, efficiency, and integration, but also holds immense potential for real-world applications. In astronomical observation, the chip can capture the complete spectra of nearly 10,000 stars per second, reducing the time needed to survey the Milky Way’s hundreds of billions of stars from several millennia to less than a decade. With its miniaturized design, Yuheng can also be mounted on satellites, paving the way for an unprecedented spectral map of the universe.

This technological leap is expected to open new frontiers in machine intelligence, airborne remote sensing, and beyond, marking a milestone in the evolution of spectral imaging and computational optics.

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