The evidence behind Intelligent Material in one place: selected papers co-authored by IMS, the field studies that use our reporter crystals, our U.S. patents, and measurements from the IMS lab in Princeton.
Rare-earth phosphors in flexible silicone films as reusable temperature sensors, read with a 980 nm laser from −50 to +200 °C. See the thermal data and Intelligent Material as sensors.
IMS nanocrystals in the shell of electrospun core-shell fibers turn infrared light into blue light that powers an oxygen-sensing dye; the red glow dims in proportion to oxygen. Aimed at reading oxygen deep in tissue, for example in brain tumors. See it on the Sensors page →
A two-layer nanofiber mat: IMS crystals in one layer, an oxygen-sensitive dye in the other. Infrared in, oxygen reading out, with response times under a quarter of a second. See it on the Sensors page →
Why rare-earth plates pack the way they do: shape competes with how strongly the coating grips each edge.
One recipe grows upconverting crystals as spheres, rods, prisms or plates, all the same size, which then self-assemble.
Dr. Paul Corstjens and his colleagues at LUMC turned upconverting crystal reporters into quantitative lateral-flow tests and validated them with patients and animals on three continents. The list also includes the papers co-authored by IMS scientists. ★ marks papers where Dr. Corstjens is first author. Links open PubMed or the journal. See how the work feeds our diagnostics programs.
No papers match.
From PubMed, October 2026. The upconverting reporter crystals in Dr. Corstjens’s UCP lateral-flow tests were supplied by IMS. Many of these papers are field evaluations that use the UCP-LF test as their reference method.
The uniform-nanocrystal synthesis recognized by the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Christopher Murray is an inventor on the IMS / Penn uniform-crystal patents.
Infrared-to-visible rare-earth oxysulfides, reported from the RCA building IMS works in today. See it measured on Our data.
Intelligent Material Solutions holds the intellectual property; NovaVera Corp. makes and sells Intelligent Material under an exclusive license. IMS holds 21 U.S. patents; key ones are listed here, and each link opens the patent in Google Patents.
For annotated patents, with what each one covers in plain words, see the IP & patents page →
We collaborate with universities, government labs and companies. Data sets, samples, SDS and TDS are available under NDA.
Every measurement on this page comes from this setup. The controller can hold each laser steady or drive it with any waveform, so the crystal can be questioned with almost any mix of infrared light.
Each run blends seven near-infrared lasers in a set proportion, shown by the bars, and records blue, green and red emission at the same time. Choose a pulse length.
Each laser mix is held for 30 ms, so you can see the light build up over the first milliseconds and fade after the lasers switch off.
Vertical axis: normalized luminescence. Successive traces are offset in time and height so they can be compared side by side. Bars: relative intensity of each laser (785, 808, 830, 905, 980, 1550, 1625 nm) in that run.
Held ten times longer. The emission settles to a steady level within a few milliseconds and holds for the whole pulse.
Vertical axis: normalized luminescence. Successive traces are offset in time and height so they can be compared side by side. Bars: relative intensity of each laser (785, 808, 830, 905, 980, 1550, 1625 nm) in that run.
Held for three seconds with a different laser mix. The output stays flat for seconds at a time: a steady, repeatable signal.
Vertical axis: normalized luminescence. Successive traces are offset in time and height so they can be compared side by side. Bars: relative intensity of each laser (785, 808, 830, 905, 980, 1550, 1625 nm) in that run.
Erbium gives off blue, green and red light together. Each color is recorded on its own, so a single reading carries three signals, not one.
Each run uses a different blend of lasers. Which wavelengths, how strong and for how long are all choices the reader makes, and the crystal's answer depends on all three.
The 30 ms traces show how the light builds and fades. IMS readers use timing as well as color; see U.S. Patent 11,922,265 on temporal authentication.
Each surface follows green emission (arbitrary units) through a 60 ms window while the laser-diode drive current is stepped from 50 to 260 mA. Same crystal, three excitation wavelengths, plus an 808 nm control. The blue and red surfaces look similar. Click any panel to enlarge.
The same crystal answers 808, 980 and 1550 nm light, and each wavelength leaves a different shape of response as power rises. That is the kind of fingerprint an IMS reader is built to check.
Heat a rare-earth phosphor and its light changes in a predictable way. In this IMS thermal-phosphor project the blue band near 455 nm grows steadily against the peak at 493 nm, from room temperature all the way to 1,100 °C. The ratio between the two is the temperature, read by light alone: no wires, no contact, through a window or into a flame.
Y₂O₂S:Yb,Er and La₂O₂S:Yb,Er were set into flexible silicone (PDMS) films and read with a 980 nm laser from −50 to +200 °C. Brightness, rise time and decay time all tracked temperature, making a thin, bendable, reusable temperature sensor. It is the same rise-and-decay clock we use to code a crystal.
Read the paper ↗In March 1971, P. N. Yocom, J. P. Wittke and I. Ladany of RCA Laboratories in Princeton reported that rare-earth oxysulfides, La₂O₂S, Gd₂O₂S and Y₂O₂S, efficiently turn the infrared light of a gallium-arsenide diode into visible green (ytterbium and erbium) or blue (ytterbium and thulium). IMS works today in the same RCA / Sarnoff building, and the crystal on this page belongs to the same family.
Intelligent Material crystals are inert, inorganic solids, used at tiny loadings inside inks, plastics, fibers and adhesives. Safety Data Sheets (SDS) and Technical Data Sheets (TDS) are available on request under a non-disclosure agreement.
We share full data sets and samples with research and industry partners under NDA. Tell us what you would like to measure.
ISO 9001:2015 CertifiedQuality management system · SGS certificate US23/00000276 · valid to June 2029We use analytics cookies to see which pages help visitors. Privacy Policy