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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Bendable mini-scanner records every loop of a fingerprint

A device that can fit in a person’s palm has enough resolution to capture fingerprints for biometric identification.
A normal image of a thermometer showing one side and a wrap-around image showing both sides

An image (left) taken with a flat sensor shows only one side of a thermometer, whereas a scan (right) taken by a wrap-around sensor shows both sides. Credit: A. J. J. M. van Breemen et al./Nature Electron.

A high-resolution scanner roughly as thick as a human hair can be wrapped around objects about 1 centimetre in diameter, allowing it to image fingerprints as well as documents1.

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Nature 599, 350 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03075-4

References

  1. Van Breemen, A. J. J. M. et al. Nature Electron. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-021-00662-1 (2021).

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