On October 16, news emerged that Professor Fang Lu's team from the Department of Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua University has made a remarkable breakthrough in the realm of intelligent photonics. They successfully developed the world's first sub - angstrom snapshot spectral imaging chip, christened 'Yuheng.' This accomplishment elevates China's intelligent photonics technology to a new pinnacle in the area of high - precision imaging and measurement. The related research results have been published online in the internationally acclaimed academic journal Nature.

Traditional spectral measurement techniques have long been plagued by a conflict between spectral resolution and imaging throughput. Drawing on the principles of intelligent photonics, Professor Fang Lu's team creatively proposed a reconfigurable computational optical imaging architecture. This innovative approach transforms the constraints of traditional physical spectroscopy into a process involving photon modulation and computational reconstruction.

Through in - depth research into the electro - optical reconfiguration characteristics of random interference masks and lithium niobate materials, the team achieved collaborative computation of high - dimensional spectral modulation and high - throughput demodulation. This ultimately led to the successful development of the 'Yuheng' chip.

Despite its compact size of roughly 2 cm × 2 cm × 0.5 cm, the 'Yuheng' chip is capable of achieving sub - angstrom spectral resolution and ten - megapixel spatial resolution for snapshot spectral imaging across a broad spectral range of 400 - 1000 nanometers. It can simultaneously capture full - spectrum and full - spatial information in a single snapshot. Compared to previous methods, its snapshot spectral imaging resolution capability has improved by two orders of magnitude.

This breakthrough effectively overcomes the long - standing bottleneck of being unable to achieve both high spectral resolution and high imaging throughput simultaneously, paving a new path for high - resolution spectral imaging technology.

Professor Fang Lu stated that the 'Yuheng' chip has surmounted challenges related to resolution, efficiency, and integration in spectral imaging systems, offering vast application prospects. For instance, in the field of astronomical observation, the snapshot imaging capability of 'Yuheng' allows it to acquire complete spectra of nearly ten thousand stars per second. This could potentially reduce the spectral survey period for the hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way from thousands of years to within a decade.

Thanks to its miniaturized design, 'Yuheng' can also be installed on satellites. This has the potential to enable the mapping of unprecedented cosmic spectral landscapes within a few years. Moreover, the 'Yuheng' chip can find applications in various fields such as machine intelligence and airborne remote sensing, bringing new opportunities and breakthroughs to the development of these related fields.