TRANSFORMATIVE TECH: SHORTWAVE INFRARED
Industry puts faith in quantum dot SWIR
What does the future hold for nanomaterial SWIR sensors? We ask Emberion’s CEO and CTO, Jyrki Rosenberg and Tapani Ryhänen
Why is there so much excitement about nanomaterial SWIR imagers? Rosenberg: ‘We’re pleased with the faith the industry has put in us [through €6m funding Emberion raised at the start of 2022]. Our investors see this technology as having wings and really being able to change the market. Tere are two main reasons: one is that [nanomaterial SWIR sensors] provide better performance than traditional technologies like InGaAs in terms of having, for example, wider bandwidth range – our imager is sensitive from 400nm to 2,000nm, but future generations will go beyond that. Secondly, we can do it at an affordable cost.’ Ryhänen: ‘Te reason why this technology
is so interesting is that it’s highly scalable. You are really able to create a different type of device – one with small pixels – with a colloidal quantum dot image sensor. Tat leads to low-cost, high-resolution devices. In addition, the technology can create imagers that can be produced in high volumes. Tat is where current III-V semiconductor InGaAs sensors have their limits – the technology is harder and more expensive to scale. ‘We have a fabrication site in Cambridge,
UK, based on semi-automated production, and will be investing in that to scale up production.’
Where are you seeing most interest in your technology? Rosenberg: ‘We have chosen to focus mostly on industrial machine vision and surveillance at this time, and that’s where we see the greatest demand from our customers. Medical imaging and self-driving cars are other potential areas. ‘In the industrial space, we’ve had interest
from customers involved in plastic sorting, and recycling more broadly. Food inspection is another area that benefits greatly from SWIR imaging, and we’re getting lots of interest from customers across the food production value chain.’
‘We’re already at the point where the market will start to shift [towards buying quantum dot SWIR sensors]’
What performance gains can you get with this technology? Ryhänen: ‘Te performance of an image sensor is the sum of many different things; noise performance and sensitivity are one element of that. At the moment, characterising our device performance, we can say we have extremely good image quality and we have very high dynamic range compared to InGaAs, which means we can get good signal-to-noise ratio for dark objects in the image while also seeing bright objects. Te images look really good compared to InGaAs images. ‘We are on a par with other quantum dot
A silicon wafer, which is transparent in the SWIR region, captured with Emberion’s VS20 Vis-SWIR camera
SWIR imagers on the market in terms of quantum efficiency (QE). QE depends on the wavelength you’re working at; when you extend the wavelength range you get lower QE. We have more than 80 per cent QE for visible light, but the same sensor will give a bit over 20 per cent QE at 1,850nm.
34 IMAGING AND MACHINE VISION EUROPE VISION YEARBOOK 2022/23
Emberion’s CTO and co-founder, Dr Tapani Ryhänen (left)
It depends on the wavelength at which the sensor is working.’
Why are these sensors more affordable than InGaAs? Ryhänen: ‘InGaAs is built from two different devices, a CMOS ROIC and a pixel array. When you build the photosensitive part, you start with an expensive indium phosphide wafer; then there’s an expensive process of building the different layers with molecular beam
Surveillance image taken with Emberion’s VS20 Vis-SWIR camera
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Emberion
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