New light-bending nanomaterials may turn science fiction into science fact across AI computing, medical, and entertainment fields.

Konstantin Novoselov, co-discoverer of graphene and 2010 Nobel laureate, is among a group of scientists behind a breakthrough that could open the way for even more revolutionary nanomaterial applications similar to graphene, from smart contact lenses to rapid disease detection.

Although scientists had long understood that crystal graphene existed, until 2004, no one had yet worked out how to extract it from graphite. With a little bit of scotch tape and innovative pluck, it was isolated by two professors at the University of Manchester: Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov.

Today, Novoselov is leading a research team for tech startup XPANCEO along with Professor Luis Martin-Moreno (Aragon Institute of Nanoscience and Materials), working on developing space-age smart contact lenses as an augmented reality (AR) interface.

The company proposes a technology that merges all other gadgets, allowing privacy and convenience as well as an unlimited augmentable field of view-imagine night vision, zoom, and apps manipulated through intuitive gaze commands.

XPANCEO's enhanced lens technology would need extraordinary performance, and the researchers proposed that rhenium diselenide (ReSe) and rhenium disulfide (ReS2) could provide the necessary power.

While testing these materials, they discovered unusual properties – both rhenium variations can create a wide form of light manipulation by adjusting the wavelength through their crystal lattices, which presents opportunities for much broader light and color manipulation.

A paper on the research was published in Nature Communications, listing the nanomaterials' significant potential for various industries. XPANCEO isn't resting on the discovery; already developing a host of commercial applications.

ReSe2 and ReS2 offer a new way for devices and applications to manipulate light. By embedding the two nanomaterials into smart contact lenses, XPANCEO plans to augment human vision with extended reality, health monitoring, and content surfing features. These properties could also enhance image coloration for individuals with impaired color perception, enabling them to see a more complete spectrum.

But that's merely the start of this research team's ambitions. The company wants the materials to power faster, cheaper biochemical sensors for early disease diagnosis using a technique called Raman Spectroscopy, which uses lasers to analyze chemical structures – a complex and expensive technique that exists today – but by enabling this enhanced light-matter interaction, ReSe2 and ReS2 could cut the costs and boost effectiveness.

"Among the promising applications is the development of highly efficient biochemical sensors. These sensors have the potential to outperform existing analogs in terms of both sensitivity and cost efficiency," said Valentyn Volkov, co-founder and scientific partner at XPANCEO. "For example, they are anticipated to significantly reduce the expenses associated with hospital blood testing equipment, which is currently quite costly, potentially by several orders of magnitude. This will also allow the detection of dangerous diseases and viruses, such as cancer or COVID, at earlier stages."

Another application is artificial intelligence computing with photonic circuits, which could provide light-speed computers suitable for tasks like superior machine learning.

Unlike electrical flows, which combine or cancel each other out, photons can flow across one another without interacting. A computer based on photonic circuits would transmit much more information more efficiently.

This discovery will easily revolutionize the fields of nanophotonics (the study and application of the physical science of light at the nanoscale) and optoelectronics (the study and application of light-emitting or light-detecting devices), presenting many more exciting possibilities for applied technological advancement.