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Room temperature detector array technology for the terahertz to far-infrared

Shaner, Eric A.; Wright, Jeremy B.; Kadlec, Emil A.; Lentine, Anthony L.; Rakich, Peter T.; Camacho, Ryan C.

Thermal detection has made extensive progress in the last 40 years, however, the speed and detectivity can still be improved. The advancement of silicon photonic microring resonators has made them intriguing for detection devices due to their small size and high quality factors. Implementing silicon photonic microring or microdisk resonators as a means of a thermal detector gives rise to higher speed and detectivity, as well as lower noise compared to conventional devices with electrical readouts. This LDRD effort explored the design and measurements of silicon photonic microdisk resonators used for thermal detection. The characteristic values, consisting of the thermal time constant ({tau} {approx} 2 ms) and noise equivalent power were measured and found to surpass the performance of the best microbolometers. Furthermore the detectivity was found to be D{sub {lambda}} = 2.47 x 10{sup 8} cm {center_dot} {radical}Hz/W at 10.6 {mu}m which is comparable to commercial detectors. Subsequent design modifications should increase the detectivity by another order of magnitude. Thermal detection in the terahertz (THz) remains underdeveloped, opening a door for new innovative technologies such as metamaterial enhanced detectors. This project also explored the use of metamaterials in conjunction with a cantilever design for detection in the THz region and demonstrated the use of metamaterials as custom thin film absorbers for thermal detection. While much work remains to integrate these technologies into a unified platform, the early stages of research show promising futures for use in thermal detection.

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TYPE SAND Report YEAR 2011
OSTIDOI

Micro-optics for high-efficiency optical performance and simplified tracking for concentrated photovoltaics (CPV)

Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering

Sweatt, W.C.; Jared, B.H.; Nielson, G.N.; Okandan, Murat O.; Filatov, A.; Sinclair, M.B.; Cruz-Campa, J.L.; Lentine, Anthony L.

Micro-optical 5mm lenses in 50mm sub-arrays illuminate arrays of photovoltaic cells with 49X concentration. Fine tracking over ±10° FOV in sub-array allows coarse tracking by meter-sized solar panels. Plastic prototype demonstrated for 400nm<λ<1600nm. © 2010 Copyright SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering.

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TYPE Conference YEAR 2010
ScopusOSTI

Low-power high-speed silicon microdisk modulators

Lasers and Electro-Optics/Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference: 2010 Laser Science to Photonic Applications, CLEO/QELS 2010

Zortman, William A.; Watts, Michael W.; Trotter, Douglas C.; Young, Ralph W.; Lentine, Anthony L.

A novel silicon microdisk modulator with "error-free" ∼3 femtojoule/bit modulation at 12.5Gbs has been demonstrated. Modulation with a 1 volt swing allows for compatibility with current and future digital logic CMOS electronics. ©2010 IEEE.

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TYPE Conference YEAR 2010
ScopusOSTI

Power penalty measurement and frequency chirp extraction in silicon microdisk resonator modulators

2010 Conference on Optical Fiber Communication, Collocated National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference, OFC/NFOEC 2010

Zortman, William A.; Lentine, Anthony L.; Watts, Michael W.; Trotter, Douglas C.

We demonstrate 5Gbs and10Gbs error free operation of silicon photonic microdisk resonant modulators to a distance of 70km, measure dispersion power penalties and compare the experimental results with theoretically derived values. ©2009 Optical Society of America.

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TYPE Conference YEAR 2010
ScopusOSTI

Thermal Microphotonic Focal Plane Array (TM-FPA)

Lentine, Anthony L.; Nielson, Gregory N.; Wright, Jeremy B.; Peters, D.W.; Zortman, William A.; McCormick, Frederick B.

The advent of high quality factor (Q) microphotonic-resonators has led to the demonstration of high-fidelity optical sensors of many physical phenomena (e.g. mechanical, chemical, and biological sensing) often with far better sensitivity than traditional techniques. Microphotonic-resonators also offer potential advantages as uncooled thermal detectors including significantly better noise performance, smaller pixel size, and faster response times than current thermal detectors. In particular, microphotonic thermal detectors do not suffer from Johnson noise in the sensor, offer far greater responsivity, and greater thermal isolation as they do not require metallic leads to the sensing element. Such advantages make the prospect of a microphotonic thermal imager highly attractive. Here, we introduce the microphotonic thermal detection technique, present the theoretical basis for the approach, discuss our progress on the development of this technology and consider future directions for thermal microphotonic imaging. Already we have demonstrated viability of device fabrication with the successful demonstration of a 20{micro}m pixel, and a scalable readout technique. Further, to date, we have achieved internal noise performance (NEP{sub Internal} < 1pW/{radical}Hz) in a 20{micro}m pixel thereby exceeding the noise performance of the best microbolometers while simultaneously demonstrating a thermal time constant ({tau} = 2ms) that is five times faster. In all, this results in an internal detectivity of D*{sub internal} = 2 x 10{sup 9}cm {center_dot} {radical}Hz/W, while roughly a factor of four better than the best uncooled commercial microbolometers, future demonstrations should enable another order of magnitude in sensitivity. While much work remains to achieve the level of maturity required for a deployable technology, already, microphotonic thermal detection has demonstrated considerable potential.

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TYPE SAND Report YEAR 2009
OSTIDOI
Results 101–125 of 134
Results 101–125 of 134