SBIR Phase I: A novel SWIR/MWIR monolithic electro-optical sensor for manportable applications for day/night surveillance

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project seeks to develop a novel electro-optical day/night vision sensor for man-portable surveillance applications. The proposed solid-state imager comprises of a monolithic focal plane array with an absorber that can detect mid-wave infrared (i.e., thermal) and SWIR radiation. This concept will require the development of a type-II semiconductor absorber material of InGaAs/GaAsSb quantum wells superlattice structures grown on InP substrates with low dark current. The processing of the device will use the company's established InGaAs/InP-based photodiode array technology platform. The combination of excellent epitaxial growth and low dark current processing technology is anticipated to yield a high sensitivity imager. The broader impacts/commercial potential of this project will be a multi-spectral imager that will augment conventional SWIR imaging capability (low light level identification, imaging of near-infrared lasers, imaging through glass and atmospheric obscurants) by adding MWIR thermal detection capability. The use of a single focal plane array will drastically reduce cost, system size, and weight and will consume less power compared to fused imaging systems with dedicated sensors for each wavelength band. The imager developed for this project would require only modest cooling (~250K) using solid-state thermoelectric coolers reducing size weight and power of the imager enabling man-portable applications. Along with these improvements, the reduction in cost enables many commercial applications such as perimeter security, law enforcement, border and homeland security, and fire fighting. In other commercial markets, applications include high-resolution molecular spectroscopy, trace gas monitoring, air pollution analysis, wind shear measurement, non-invasive and medical diagnostics. Military applications include target identification and detection, laser designation detection, passive and active night vision, infrared thermal sensors, long stand-off reconnaissance and surveillance from UAVs and airships, helmet mounted night vision systems and remote sensing.