Short-wave infrared nano-injection imaging sensors

Abstract

A novel nano-injection based imaging sensor is presented towards demanding applications in telecommunications, biophotonics, optical tomography, explosives detection and non-destructive material evaluation. The sensor can provide low noise levels concurrently with strong internal amplification, which results in a significant increase in the signal-to-noise levels compared to existing short-wave infrared imagers. The imager arrays are 320-by-256 pixels, with a pixel pitch of 30 µm. Post-hybridization, the imager test pixels shows internal amplification exceeding 2,000 electrons/photon with little excess noise (F~1.5) even at high amplification values. The imager shows a high signal to noise ratio at high frame rates and short integration times. Furthermore, the nano-injection imaging sensor shows significant sensitivity improvement over a high-end commercial short-wave infrared camera at similar settings, which highlights the benefits of implementing nanoinjection process in imaging sensors.

Dynamically Reconfigurable Data Readout of Pixel Detectors for Automatic Synchronization with Data Acquisition Systems

“…In its typical low-voltage operating conditions, the amplification mechanism of EI detectors is based on transistor action: namely the modulation of a potential barrier by trapped photo-generated excess carriers [37,38]. However, it has been observed that when the EI detectors are biased to higher voltage, a high enough field is created at the heterojunction to trigger Geiger-like operation [39,40].…”