I-Corps: Assessing the Commercial Potential of an Advanced Oxide Material for Infrared Detection

这个i-Corps项目将进一步开发一种用于红外探测的先进氧化物材料。目前红外探测器和热成像仪的市场主要由两种技术主导：基于半导体的探测器将入射红外光转换为电荷载流子，然后被放大为电子信号；微测辐射热计利用热敏特性(通常是电阻)直接将热转换为电子信号。在这两种情况下，由于每个阵列元件需要多个电引线，今天的红外阵列探测器的读出电路根本无法扩展到1-200万像素以上。研究小组开发了一种使用不同方法进行红外探测的技术。这项技术不是将红外光子转换为载流子，而是利用氧化物薄膜的光学性质的变化，这种变化发生在材料经历热致相变时。从概念上讲，这项技术将使当今热像仪背面复杂而昂贵的读出电路被本质上是滤光片的设备取代，这种滤光片可以让廉价的高分辨率相机“看到”红外/热辐射。该团队相信，这项技术将使分辨率达到1000万像素以上，是商用非制冷热像仪的10倍以上。目前，红外传感器市场在监视、交通、工业监控、能源和医疗保健等领域有望大幅增长。现有的热成像设备基于笨重的技术，很难扩展到100-200万像素以上的分辨率。因此，已经由高分辨率光学设备实现的成像处理方面的进步不能应用于红外领域。该技术将通过利用光学材料的技术创新来开发一种革命性的产品：高灵敏度、超高分辨率红外探测器，以满足高分辨率热成像的未得到满足的需求。该团队认为，这项技术可能会在广泛的应用领域产生影响，因此产生广泛经济和社会影响的可能性很高。

This I-Corps project will further develop an advanced oxide material for infrared detection. Two technologies dominate the current market for infrared detectors and thermal imagers: semiconductor-based detectors convert incident infrared light into charge carriers, which are then amplified into an electronic signal, while microbolometers directly transform heat into an electronic signal using a heat-sensitive property (usually resistance). In both cases, the read-out circuitry for today's infrared array detectors simply does not scale beyond 1-2 megapixels due to the need for multiple electric leads at each array element. The research team has developed a technology that uses a different approach to infrared detection. Rather than converting infrared photons to carriers, the technology exploits changes in optical properties of an oxide thin film that occur as the material undergoes a thermally-induced phase transition. Conceptually, the technology would enable the replacement of the complicated and expensive read-out circuitry on the back of today's thermal imagers with what is essentially a filter that allows a cheap high-resolution camera to "see" infrared/thermal radiation. The team believes this technology will enable resolutions of over 10 megapixels, more than 10x the state-of-the-art for commercially available uncooled thermal imagers.The current market for infrared sensors is poised for dramatic growth in areas such as surveillance, transportation, industrial monitoring, energy, and health care. Existing thermal imaging devices are based on unwieldy technologies that have difficulty scaling to resolutions greater than 1-2 megapixels. Thus, advances in imaging processing that have been enabled by high-resolution optical devices cannot be applied to the infrared realm. The technology will address the unmet need of high-resolution thermal imaging by exploiting technological innovations in optical materials to develop a revolutionary product: a high-sensitivity, ultra-high-resolution infrared detector. The team believes the technology could have impact in a wide set of application areas, thus the potential for broad economic and societal impact is high.