Less expensive SWIR to MWIR camera

[Ben321]

I found this wide band IR imager that covers a band from SWIR all the way up through MWIR. Usually IR imagers only cover one band at a time, like SWIR, MWIR, or LWIR. This camera though covers SWIR and MWIR from 1000nm to 5000nm. I say "less expensive", not "cheap", because this is definitely not cheap. At a price of $4995, It's still out of the price range of the average hobbyist, but it's cheaper than some other SWIR camera's that I've seen. However, this lower price comes at a huge cost. It sacrifices resolution to be less expensive. The imaging sensor is a 32x32 array (total pixel count is 1024 pixels). This is a VERY LOW resolution. It seems like it would actually be unusable for most situations.
Here's the link to the product in question. https://alliedscientificpro.com/shop/product/matrix-1024-core-s-22532

[Bill W]

Not to mention it is not that sensitive ....

"Minimum temperature of detection: 100 ºC"

However of less concern to its' normal target markets in furnace and flame monitoring


Bill

[Ben321]

It appears that the manufacturer of this camera is New Infrared Technologies, which has developed a way to make uncooled MWIR and SWIR cameras. Typically, only LWIR cameras were available in both cooled and uncooled varieties, while SWIR and MWIR were all cooled sensors. MWIR used mechanical coolers, while SWIR usually used thermoelectric coolers. This NIT company though appears to have created SWIR and MWIR cameras that don't need any cooling, according to their website https://www.niteurope.com/en/

One interesting thing I notice that their website mentions is:
"CMOS integration
Imaging sensors monolithically integrated with ROIC-CMOS"

I'm not exactly sure what "monolithically integrated" means, but it sounds like it might mean a one-step process to produce the SWIR or MWIR imaging sensor. Typically it's a 3 step process:
Making the InGaAs chip for SWIR imaging (or InSb for MWIR imaging).
Making the silicon readout chip.
Then aligning the 2 chips are very precisely and welding them together in a way that doesn't damage them.

In this case, it sounds like they may have developed a chip-making machine, that can handle both silicon and InGaAs (or InSb), which can create a single chip composed of both materials. If that's the case, it should MASSIVELY drive down costs for SWIR and MWIR cameras built in the future. Maybe they could even create a consumer level SWIR or MWIR camera in the future that's at a reasonable cost, in much the same way that FLIR created a consumer level LWIR camera when they created the FLIR One.

[Bill W]

Reverse engineering the lens quoted gives 150um pixels, so sounds more like a thermopile / thermistor array

Bill