Nano-BiCMOS Night Vision Camera

Night vision capability is one of the most important battlefield advantages of the U.S. military, especially in today’s asymmetric warfare. The Gen III night vision goggles in service today is based on the vacuum tube technology with a semiconductor photo cathode, resulting in limitations on view angle, size, manufacturing cost and device operating lifetime. The requirement of special training in combination with the minimum of $2,500 annual cost of ownership has prevented its wide-spread deployment with each and every soldier. Highly desirable is a solid state low-light-level night vision camera using the highly reliable low-cost silicon CMOS technology. We propose a nano-technology solution on the silicon CMOS platform. The proposed nano-BiCMOS low-light-level camera combines the most recently industrialized nano-materials with the miniaturized and monolithically integrated version of a proven solid-state detector technology. The resulting camera is expected to enable surveillance and reconnaissance at night vision sensitivity and large detection distances. In Phase I we will fabricate the semiconductor detector device, to prove the feasibility of our high-resolution nano-BiCMOS imager concept. In Phase II we will prototype the entire night vision camera system to full specifications, which will be delivered to DoD Labs for evaluation and demonstration.