The Need

Long Wavelength Infrared (LWIR) detectors are crucial in various fields, but traditional detectors face significant drawbacks in terms of size, thermal noise, and coupling efficiencies. Current detectors use cryogenic cooling in the form of mercury cadmium telluride (MCT), a significant drawback due to poor performance characteristics, and high manufacturing costs. There is a pressing need for LWIR detectors that eliminate the need for cryogenic cooling, demonstrate superior performance characteristics, and offer a cost-effective solution.

The Technology

A team of The Ohio State University researchers, led by Dr. Sanjay Krishna, has developed a new LWIR detector that breaks the trade-off between the key characteristics. This is accomplished by combining a dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) with a semiconductor absorber. Unlike traditional metallic antennas, our all-dielectric antennas exhibit very low loss in a LWIR detector, leading to promising efficiencies. This design can be used to optimize the signal, noise and speed for a given application with constraints placed on the operating wavelength, temperature, spectral and frequency bandwidth and cost. This detector enables an improvement in the signal to noise by reducing the noise contribution while enhancing the signal detection. The approach can be extended to cover the infrared spectrum. It can also be applied to an array of detectors that will be used to form an imager. The design can be optimized by adjusting the resonator structure, resonator material, and placement of the detector within the structure.

Commercial Applications

• Security Systems: Enhanced infrared detection can improve the effectiveness of security systems.
• Medical Imaging: Improved signal-to-noise ratio can lead to more accurate medical imaging.
• Environmental Monitoring: Efficient LWIR detectors can enhance environmental monitoring capabilities.

Benefits/Advantages

• Improved Efficiency: Our technology offers high quantum efficiencies due to the use of dielectric antennas.
• Enhanced Performance: The proposed approach improves signal-to-noise ratio and detectivity by improving coupling and reducing high temperature noise.
• Cost-Effective: Our technology demonstrates a path toward LWIR focal plane arrays (FPAs), reducing the cost and schedule risk associated with manufacturing LWIR detectors and FPAs.
• No Need for Cryogenic Cooling: Our technology removes the need for cryogenic cooling of LWIR detectors.
• Superior Performance Characteristics: Our technology achieves performance characteristics as good as or better than cooled mercury cadmium telluride (MCT) detectors of the prior art.