Fairchild Imaging has licensed Berkeley Lab's HiRho CCD technology for NIR imaging. This exciting new technology dramatically improves sensitivity in the near infrared for aerospace, defense, medical and scientific imaging.
Milpitas, CA (PRWEB) June 9, 2005 -- Fairchild Imaging announced today that it has signed an agreement with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) for use of their HiRho Charge Coupled Device (CCD) technology. This exciting new technology enables production of CCD imagers with dramatically improved performance in the red to near infrared (NIR) regions of the spectrum. These devices have found favor with astronomers, but will also provide tremendous benefit to scientists and engineers in aerospace, defense, medical and scientific imaging applications.
Scientists at Berkeley Lab have been working on improving the NIR response of CCD detectors since the mid 90s and have produced devices of unrivaled performance. To bring this technology to the commercial market and allow access by the entire high performance imaging community, Fairchild Imaging has partnered with Berkeley Lab and licensed the technology across all markets. Charles Arduini, President and CEO of Fairchild Imaging, notes, this technology complements our low noise, wafer scale and back illuminated CCD technologies very well and will be a great boon in applications such as astronomy, night vision and near infrared fluorescence from biological specimens”.
HiRho technology opens an optical window that has, until now, been all but closed. Traditional CCD sensors have very low sensitivity in the NIR due to the fact that silicon becomes increasingly transparent at longer wavelengths. Other detectors such as infrared sensors or photomultiplier tubes also have poor sensitivity in the NIR either because of inherently poor response or high noise factors that degrade signal fidelity. CCD designers in search of a solution have chosen to pursue technically demanding approaches such as back illumination and deep depletion devices. While these techniques have improved quantum efficiency (QE), they also come with serious drawbacks such as optical interference, poorer resolution, increased noise and higher costs.
The Berkeley Lab HiRho technology improves NIR QE by more than an order of magnitude over traditional CCD sensors and does so without optical interference and with enhanced resolution versus back illumination or deep depletion CCDs. HiRho devices are much thicker than typical CCDs or even deep depletion CCDs; hence, they are less transparent and far superior at capturing NIR illumination. The thickness of these devices also prevents optical interference from degrading the imagery as it does with other back illuminated CCDs. Moreover, because of a relatively facile process to add a backside contact, the devices can maintain high spatial resolution – even in a device that is several hundred microns thick.
HiRho CCD technology was developed by Dr. Stephen Holland and his colleagues at the Berkeley Lab Microsystems Laboratory in Berkeley, California. Additional information can be found at the HiRho groups website, http://design.lbl.gov/ccd, or the University of California Observatories (UCO) Detector Development Laboratorys site, http://www.ccd.ucolick.org.
About Fairchild Imaging
Fairchild Imaging is a manufacturer of CCD and CMOS image sensors and cameras for aerospace, industrial, medical and scientific imaging. Located in Milpitas, CA, Fairchild Imaging is a privately held corporation whose major investors include The Carlyle Group, BAE Systems, and management. Information about Fairchild Imaging is available on the worldwide Web at http://www.fairchildimaging.com.
About Berkeley Lab
Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of California. Visit the Lab website at http://www.lbl.gov.
Contact Information:
Colin Earle
Fairchild Imaging
PH: 408-433-2500
FAX: 408-435-7352
http://www.fairchildimaging.com
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