Has anyone found patent applications or publications from this company which explain further details?
I am curious how the quantum dots actually work -- do they convert incoming light into visible-range photons or directly into electrons? How close is the CMOS architecture to a typical CMOS camera sensor? (Or is it indeed a standard camera chip, with just the quantum dot conversion layer added?)
The quantum efficiency and the noise level of their current products are somewhat disappointing. Regarding noise, I am surprised by the very high readout (?) noise baseline, which is there even at minimal exposure times. Yes, their chips are optimized for fast readout and are apparently uncooled, but why is the noise level that high?
Based on what was published so far, the company is using a standard, thin-film technology (thus lower costs), depositing PbS photodiodes directly on standard CMOS ROICs.
Max
I strongly doubt they are doing IR to visible light conversion, as that is stunningly inefficient.
I strongly doubt they are doing IR to visible light conversion, as that is stunningly inefficient.
I recently saw a paper claiming a breakthrough with an in cavity non-linear crystal, 20% QE for MWIR to 800 nm ... not visible, but close enough.
All of this has potential, but until someone makes a bunch it is dream stuff. HgCdTe was going to solve all detector problems until the reality of producing large arrays with acceptable defect rates and at acceptable costs crept in. Same for several other technologies. It isn't necessarily that the technology is bad either. It is partly that we have been spoiled by the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on silicon fabrication technology and often blissfully unaware of the many, many problems that have been solved along the road. And only a portion of those solutions apply to these detectors. They will never have enough production volume to warrant the investment that has solved so many problems in silicon.
This company has figured out how to make cheaper SWIR cameras ... my skepticist strongly doubts it will be any cheaper for the end customer.
They will never have enough production volume to warrant the investment that has solved so many problems in silicon.
As with other consumer level cameras that are not intended for scientific use, there is a much larger level of acceptable defects in the image sensor.
As with other consumer level cameras that are not intended for scientific use, there is a much larger level of acceptable defects in the image sensor.Actually, depending on the purpose, scientific use can actually accept much more poorer quality than consumers. Science doesn't care about a bunch of dead pixels at one spot, they'll just shift it a bit to use the area that works, and are happy to have saved half the camera price for exactly the same scientific results. The research project budgets are typically 50% too low to start with anyway.
As with other consumer level cameras that are not intended for scientific use, there is a much larger level of acceptable defects in the image sensor.Actually, depending on the purpose, scientific use can actually accept much more poorer quality than consumers. Science doesn't care about a bunch of dead pixels at one spot, they'll just shift it a bit to use the area that works, and are happy to have saved half the camera price for exactly the same scientific results. The research project budgets are typically 50% too low to start with anyway.
Usually though scientific cameras are built to a higher (not lower) standard by companies like FLIR. And thus the increased cost above equivalent consumer-level cameras. For example, not only is the total number of bad pixels kept below a certain threshold, but any VOx microbolometer that had 2 or more adjacent bad pixels is always rejected. It's tough-to-meet specs like that which mean 9 out of every 10 VOx microbolometers gets thrown in the trash, HUGELY increasing the cost of thermal imagers. Consumer level visible-light digital cameras are cheaper, because at worst they only throw out (at most) 50% of their CMOS or CCD chips, because the specs for consumer level cameras are much lower. The actual per-chip manufacturing cost (even with exotic materials like VOx) is not that high, but the price is raised dramatically because of how many chips intended for scientific cameras get tossed down the garbage chute for not meeting scientific-level specs.