It's probably more complex that just buying the electric eye components for a garage door opener and hooking it up to something like an Ecolink contact sensor (which has terminal), I'd assume?
I haven't found any z-wave or even zigbee "electric eyes", yet anyway.
It should work exactly as you've described. You would just wire the common/normally closed pair from the active infra receiver to switch a zigbee/z wave contact sensor or smart implant.
I'm doing similar with traditional alarm system 12V PIRs - fitting a Fibaro Implant inside them. I then just link 0V on the PIR to common and normally closed connects back to the implant input.
I think the garage door units are more complex.
Fair enough (I’ve not read the linked article yet). There are a variety of safety type sensors available that have dry contact outputs - IR TX/RX beam sets, pressure strips, in ground induction loops or sensors. So it depends on what you’re trying to achieve.
It's a matter, for me, of defining search terms.
"Electric Eye", gets a lot of Judas Priest hits, lol.
Infrared Beam sensor not so much, even on Amazon. 
This one is made by my gate operator company, Topens, and it uses dry contacts:
https://www.amazon.com/TOPENS-TC102-Infrared-Photocell-Security/dp/B07ZTB4VML
There are a bunch of them using dry contacts. Here's an example of reflective:
https://www.amazon.com/Retro-Reflective-Photoelectric-12-240VDC-24-240VAC-Proximity/dp/B084ZT442X
Nothing I can find direct to Z-wave or Zigbee that I can find, yet.
They'll still work well coupled with anything that'll accept an input. I like the Fibaro implant as it can use a wide voltage range. In that regard it wouldn't matter whether the beams were 12 or 24V DC; you only need one small PSU for both the beams and Z Wave device. The Fibaro one is tiny and in my use easily fits inside the casing of the PIR to which it's connected. It's a much neater install than having to add another small enclosure.
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