Micromachine UV-Vis-IR High Resolution Fast Imaging Photodetector

Microchannel plates (MCP) are essential for high gain UV-visible-near IR imaging and detection applications in defense, science, medicine, industry, security and consumer applications. Common MCP are fabricated from activated lead glass and suffer from a gain that falls rapidly with cumulative operation. MCP are expensive, available in limited areas, have significant spatial & pixel gain non-uniformities, and low dynamic range. We propose to overcome many of these difficulties by using micromachined silicon plates as the basis of an MCP. When initiated on photolithographic-patterned silicon, light assisted anodization forms densely packed 0.2-lo Hm wide microchannels appropriate for microchannel gain. Silicon dioxide films on amorphous silicon serve as gain channels, without contaminating materials, and with controlled plate resistance. We anticipate that this material system will have superior stability & lifetime compared to glass MCP, at low cost, in large MCP areas, 50% greater detection efficiency, and sub-micron spatial resolution, appropriate for direct pixel readout. These properties will enable fast, compact MCP technology to be used much more widely in a large variety of imaging applications for military and civilian use over a wide range of vacuum photocathode wavelengths. In Phase I, we propose to fabricate silicon MCP's and measure their properties. If successful, micro/nanochannel plates (M/NCP) with a much longer operational life compared with current MCP would result. They could enable: (1) long lived image W -Vis-IR intensifiers/converters with sub-micron spatial resolution; (2) ultrafast, gated, compact, high MCP photomultipliers (PMT); (3) flat panel vacuum phospher displays; (4) imaging charged particle/x-ray detectors with high gain and sub-micron spatial resolution.