Short-wave infrared nano-injection imaging sensors

A novel nano-injection based imaging sensor is presented towards demanding applications in telecommunications, biophotonics, optical tomography, explosives detection and non-destructive material evaluation. The sensor can provide low noise levels concurrently with strong internal amplification, which results in a significant increase in the signal-to-noise levels compared to existing short-wave infrared imagers. The imager arrays are 320-by-256 pixels, with a pixel pitch of 30 μm. Post-hybridization, the imager test pixels shows internal amplification exceeding 2,000 electrons/photon with little excess noise (F∼1.5) even at high amplification values. The imager shows a high signal to noise ratio at high frame rates and short integration times. Furthermore, the nano-injection imaging sensor shows significant sensitivity improvement over a high-end commercial short-wave infrared camera at similar settings, which highlights the benefits of implementing nano-injection process in imaging sensors.