MIT is designing the MEMS structures, and Honeywell is fabricating them. The Polychromator is a variation of a conventional gas analysis technique, correlation spectroscopy.
Infrared radiation is passed through a sample gas that imparts a spectral pattern to the radiation.
This pattern is then correlated with the spectrum of a reference gas to provide the identification. Each gas has its own distinct spectral pattern, which can be used to identify the gas. Butler said the limitation of the standard method is that it requires a reference cell of the gas and the testing equipment is bulky. Light from the gas cloud shines on the chip after being collected by an optical device, such as a telescope or binoculars. The way this would actually work, Butler said, is that as a user peers through the binoculars and the light strikes the Polychromator chip, a microprocessor inside would direct the MEMS grating through a series of movements in a matter of seconds.