https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180607141002.htm

However, scientists at EPFL's School of Engineering and at Australian National University (ANU) have developed a compact and sensitive nanophotonic system that can identify a molecule's absorption characteristics without using conventional spectrometry.

Their system consists of an engineered surface covered with hundreds of tiny sensors called metapixels, which can generate a distinct bar code for every molecule that the surface comes into contact with. These bar codes can be massively analyzed and classified using advanced pattern recognition and sorting technology such as artificial neural networks. This research -- which sits at the crossroads of physics, nanotechnology and big data -- has been published in Science.