All-Solution-Processable Robust Carbon Nanotube Photo-Thermoelectric Devices for Multi-Modal Inspection Applications

While recent industrial automation trends emphasize the importance of non-destructive inspection by material-identifying millimeter-wave, terahertz-wave, and infrared (MMW, THz, IR) monitoring, fundamental tools in these wavelength bands (such as sensors) are still immature. Although inorganic semiconductors serve as diverse sensors with well-established large-scale fine-processing fabrication, the use of those devices is insufficient for non-destructive monitoring due to the lack of photo-absorbent properties for such major materials in partial regions across MMW-IR wavelengths. To satisfy the inherent advantageous non-destructive MMW-IR material identification, ultrabroadband operation is indispensable for photo-sensors under compact structure, flexible designability, and sensitive performances. This review then introduces the recent advances of carbon nanotube film-based photo-thermoelectric imagers regarding usable and high-yield device fabrication techniques and scientific synergy among computer vision to collectively satisfy material identification with three-dimensional (3D) structure reconstruction. This review synergizes material science, printable electronics, high-yield fabrication, sensor devices, optical measurements, and imaging into guidelines as functional non-destructive inspection platforms. The motivation of this review is to introduce the recent scientific fusion of MMW-IR sensors with visible-light computer vision, and emphasize its significance (non-invasive material-identifying sub-millimeter-resolution 3D-reconstruction with 660 nm-1.15 mm-wavelength imagers at noise equivalent power within 100 pWHz^-1/2) among the existing testing methods.