High Sensitivity, Energy-Efficient and Low-Cost SWIR Focal Plane Arrays

Shortwave Infrared (SWIR) imaging photodiode arrays and SWIR single photodiodes find a wide range of critical applications. The high cost, at present, of these SWIR imaging photodiode arrays, strongly limits their use. Imaging photodiode sensor arrays currently cost several thousand dollars, in the range of $5K to $20K per unit. Significantly lower cost SWIR photodiodes are urgently needed by commercial and government entities to expand the market of existing applications and to create new paradigm shifting opportunities in additional applications. A significant reduction in cost of about an order of magnitude, while maintaining performance, has the potential of revolutionizing many areas of public benefit, from medical diagnostic to road safety, among many others. This project will develop technology for metamorphic hetero-epitaxial growth of III-V semiconductor materials on large wafers (up to 12-inch diameter), which provides a unique capability to fabricate photodiode arrays at low cost. The goal is to fabricate SWIR wafers that are ten times the area of current ones (InP or GaAs based), producing devices at one tenth of the current cost, while maintaining high performance. Photodiode sensor array cost estimates indicate that these will be in the hundreds of dollars rather than thousands of dollars. In addition, this technology allows for wafer-scale heterogeneous integration of SWIR photodiodes and Silicon Readout Integrated Circuits (ROICs), simplifying back-end formation of Focal Plane Arrays (FPAs), leading to further improvements in both scaling and cost In Phase I of this project, photodiode array prototypes will be designed and fabricated as a risk reduction step to fine tune the architecture to be implemented in Phase II. Both performance and cost aspects will be considered in the designs. The Commercialization Plan will be refined in parallel with the technical effort. These SWIR FPAs address large and critical commercial market needs, including applications such as automotive LiDAR, mapping LiDAR, laser rangefinders, smartphone / augmented facial recognition, artificial Intelligence (AI), medical equipment, semiconductor and industrial inspection, quantum computing, optical communication, defense, surveillance and security. In addition, this program generates a number of public benefits: increases the economic competitiveness of the United States, advances the health and welfare of the American public, supports the national defense of the United States, enhances partnerships between academia and industry and helps the development of the American photonic workforce.