The introduction of an uncooled microbolometer image sensor about a decade ago
enabled cost reduction of IR cameras. As a result, the available markets grew both in
military and civilian applications. Since then, the price of microbolometer was gradually
reduced due to introduction of devices with smaller pixel, maturity of the technology and
quantity growth. However, the requirement for a vacuum package still limits the price of
microbolometer based cameras to several thousands of dollars. Sirica's novel wavelength
conversion technology aims at breaking this paradigm by being uncooled and vacuumless,
lowering IR camera prices by an order of magnitude, opening the way to new mass
markets.
Sirica's proprietary IR-to-Visible/NIR conversion layer allows for low-cost high
performance LWIR detector with no requirement for cooling and vacuum packaging.
In the last years, the development efforts focused on development of the conversion
media. Recently, a parallel effort for the integration of the conversion layer together with
other detector components has started. Packaging of detector components, such as
conversion layer, pumping light source, dichroic filter, and their coupling with silicon
CMOS image sensor have great importance from a price-performance point of view.
According to the company's business-development roadmap, the detector prototype
should be available during the first quarter of 2010.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.