Concatenated silicon etalon tunable filter for hyperspectral imaging in the near infrared

A critical limitation imposed on all imaging systems is to achieve an optimal balance between optical resolution and bandwidth. The optical system determines and affects the relations between temporal information, spatial bandwidth, and resolution, so the resulting signal may differ for each wavelength. This is of significant importance for hyperspectral imaging in particular, because it extracts both spatial and temporal wavelength information. We present a dispersive device that can be used for hyperspectral imaging hypercube image measurements. We utilize the Vernier effect by integrating two silicon slabs that act together as a modified Fabry–Perot filter. The transition between wavelength bands is achieved by heating, utilizing the thermo-optic effect. Importantly, we show that red-shifting with concatenated slabs requires less heating than with a single slab. With the presented technique, a wide effective free spectral range of up to 90 nm around a central wavelength of 1550 nm was achieved along with 20-nm full-width-at-half-maximum resolution. With the same configuration, observing a narrower 0.7-nm free spectral range bandwidth, a fine spectrum resolution of 0.07 nm was obtained. Such variety covers most of the spatial and temporal standard limitations of current hyperspectral imaging requirements.