The infofuse - encoding messages using colourful fire

Blogging on Peer-Reviewed ResearchFor many of us, the most memorable bits of school chemistry classes were lessons where we ignited metal salts over a Bunsen burner to produce brightly coloured flames, from the lilac of potassium to the distinctive red of lithium. Now a group of chemists from Harvard University have found a way of using these colourful flames to transmit coded information.

Working in the lab of legendary chemist George Whitesides, Samuel Thomas III has developed the 'infofuse', a strip of flammable paper patterned with metal salts. As the strip burns, the metals change the colour of the flames, creating coded pulses of light that can be used to send messages. It's a vibrant, visual equivalent of Morse code and as a test-run, they used their infofuses to transmit the message, "LOOK MOM NO ELECTRICITY".

Thomas sees the infofuses as the first step toward a lightweight, self-powered form of communication that doesn't involve any electronics to store or transmit information. "We're interested in the intersection of information and chemistry," says Thomas, who dubs his work as 'infochemistry'. "Cells communicate using chemical signals, and we are interested in bridging the gap between that sort of chemical communication and the digital communication that our technological infrastructure is built on."

DNA is the biological epitome of this concept. Through a chain of molecules, it encodes instructions for building proteins that is then transmitted in the form of RNA and translated by enzymes. Outside the realm of biology, similar systems don't exist. You could think of signal flares, smoke signals of even litmus tests as ways of transmitting information through chemistry, albeit simple and slow ones. The infofuse is more sophisticated.

It is made of a highly flammable material called nitrocellulose or 'flash paper'. It burns with a 1,000C flame that moves along the paper at a constant speed, producing very little smoke and leaving no ash. Codes are written on the paper using small spots of metal ions dotted along the fuse strip using either a small pipette or an inkjet printer. As the strip burns, the wavelengths and order of the flames carry messages.


On its own, the nitrocellulose burns with a yellow-orange flame with strong signals that match those of sodium and potassium. The metal salts change the spectrum of the emitted light, making it shine brightly in the blue (copper), green (barium), yellow (sodium), red (lithium, strontium, calcium), or infrared (potassium, rubidium, and cesium) parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.

In the end, Thomas used the salts of just three metals - lithium, rubidium and caesium. He developed a code where every letter, every digit and four symbols (. ! ? @) were each represented by a unique combination of two consecutive pulses of light. In every pulse, each of the three emitters was either ablaze or not producing eight possible combinations of light. To ensure that the code is as unambiguous as possible, the combinations that were easiest to resolve were assigned to the most common letters (E, T and A). The combinations that could be most easily confused with one another were assigned to Q, Z and X.

As a test-run, Thomas managed to use the code to transmit the message "LOOK MOM NO ELECTRICITY". With a pulse frequency of 11Hz, the entire message took less than four seconds to transmit. Obviously, there's room for inaccuracy because the flame front moves, and small variations in the nitrocellulose strip can change the rate at which it burns and the intensities of the flames. But Thomas found that a bit of post-detection processing could easily adjust for these errors.

Fire-codes are certainly impressive, but to Thomas, they aren't just a matter of scientific curiosity. He says, "We envision that infofuses or similar materials could be used in situations where electricity is of limited availability or not available, or when carrying large quantities of batteries is difficult.  Emergency situations are one area in which these could be useful: signal flares are ubiquitous, but do not transmit very much information.  Infofuses could serve as signal flares that transmit specific information about the sender."

Obviously, the messages need to be detected by electronic equipment - either a special camera or a fibre optic cable linked to a spectrometer, a device that measures the intensities of different wavelengths of light. Thomas agrees, but he focuses on the many advantages provided by the signal's self-powered transmission.

It happens in every direction at one so that detectors can see it from any angle. At the moment, they can detect the fiery messages at a distance of 30 metres, even in bright daylight. The different wavelengths given off by the metal salts are very sharp and they stand out from their background to give the infofuse flames an exceptionally high signal-to-noise ratio. The burning is relatively inefficient, converting the energy released into light with just 1% of the efficiency of an LED but gram for gram, the burning nitrocellulose releases about 10 times more energy than an alkaline battery does.

And the technology is only in its infancy. There are many potential ways it could be developed. For a start, the messages on the infofuses can also be coded in different ways. The length of the metal spots on the strip determines how long the fiery pulse lasts for; the spacing between spots controls the time between the pulses; and the amount of salt that's added affects the intensity of the flame. Each of these variables could carry information. Thomas says, "We're expanding infofuses to last longer, transmit over longer distances and encode information more efficiently."  

Reference: Thomas, S., Chiechi, R., LaFratta, C., Webb, M., Lee, A., Wiley, B., Zakin, M., Walt, D., & Whitesides, G. (2009). Infochemistry and infofuses for the chemical storage and transmission of coded information Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0902476106

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Quite interesting and maybe directly or indirectly useful (spin-offs), but I'm having difficulty seeing practical applications (limited imagination on my part, no doubt). Of all applications I come up with, there is already a better method of transmitting information even when options are limited (e.g. LED light and Morse Code--LED batteries are coin-sized, last years compared to an infofuse which is used once and gone).


I'm not sure how that is relevant considering you're not likely to have the equipment, material, and level of accuracy needed to make these infofuses yourself. That means the specific information is already precoded onto the strip you are carrying. In which case, why not use a flare which tells the watchers to check the specific information you've already left with them (one if by land, two if by sea...). Or a quick radio burst. Or a flashing light.

I'd like to see some real life examples that demonstrate how infofuses are a better choice than more readily available low-tech options, or even higher portable options. E.g. Small programmable handheld pointer laser. You can enter a message into it, and it will then use microsecond light pulses to transmit your message to a camera much faster than you could do it yourself. Or a similar theme except using a LED light, or a halogen lamp if secrecy isn't necessary.

By Daniel J. Andrews (not verified) on 26 May 2009 #permalink

I could see these kinds of technologies applied where you might not be able to rely on having any electricity, even from battery power. The flare scenario could be an example. Imagine if you were on a ship that had emergency flares coded with the name of the vessel and the kind of emergency you're experiencing in broad categories. That information would remain on those flares essentially forever even if the vessel were without power for months on end. Long after all batteries on board might have died, the flares would still be usable to transmit some information.

Another example would be if you created a chemical "typewriter" that could encode the strips without using electricity. As long as you had the chemicals necessary, you'd have the ability to transmit information, even if no power sources of any kind were available. A coded flare could get someone's attention and when you know they are looking you could burn a coded strip with more information.

These could also be useful for encoding information which is only intended to be retrieved once. Like telling the recipient to burn after reading, but enforcing it by making the message only decipherable by burning