The roadmap for low price- high performance IR detector based on LWIR to NIR light up-conversion approach

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.