Objective
Numerous applications extending from military (night vision, surveillance, airborne tracking) to civilian (pharmaceutical and food industry spectroscopy, environmental monitoring, machine and automotive vision, biomedical imaging) are based on infrared photodectors and imaging arrays that detect photons in the Mid Infrared (MWIR) 3 – 5 um and Long wavelength Infrared (LWIR) from 8 - 12 um. Although CdHgTe semiconductor compound offered efficient coverage of the infrared spectrum by varying the stoichiometry the exploitation of this material towards the fabrication of imaging sensors was proved very challenging due to the costly complex growth processes as well as due to inherent spatial non-uniformity issues. Dramatic progress has been made recently in the field of epitaxially grown quantum dots that offer significant advantages of controlled growth as well as normal incidence sensitivity and dramatically lower dark current densities. The main disadvantage of this new approach however lies on the high cost and complexity method of molecular beam epitaxy required to grow the quantum dots as well as the incompatibility with monolithic integration to silicon (CMOS) read-out circuitry. The advent of colloidal quantum dots has been established during the last decade, where the quantum dots can be synthesized in solution phase. Following the bottom-up approach, fabrication of thin films can then take place using room-temperature, low-cost, well-established techniques such as spraycasting and spincoating enabling large-scale manufacturing directly integrated onto CMOS platforms. In this proposal we combine the unique physical properties of quantum dots with the most desired chemical and processing properties of solution-processed materials to develop initially an infrared photodetector and subsequently an infrared imaging array system with high sensitivity and cost that is estimated to be two orders of magnitude lower than current approaches.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensorsoptical sensors
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcoating and films
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrymetalloids
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesastronomyobservational astronomyinfrared astronomy
- natural sciencesphysical sciencestheoretical physicsparticle physicsphotons
Call for proposal
FP7-PEOPLE-2009-RG
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
MC-IRG - International Re-integration Grants (IRG)Coordinator
08860 Castelldefels
Spain