Cambridge team builds $10 chip that identifies food, plastics and medicines

University of Cambridge researchers, working with startup GlitterinTech, have developed a spectrometer chip costing about $10 that reads light between 1,200 and 1,700 nanometres. In tests it classified plastics, pharmaceuticals, coffee, flour and tea with 100% accuracy. The low-cost device could enable portable material analysis and future wearable health monitoring.