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Press Release

Cougar SWIR Camera at VISION 2012

By October 30, 2012June 23rd, 2021No Comments

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Leuven, Belgium / Stuttgart, Germany, 30 October 2012 – Xenics, Europe’s leading developer and manufacturer of advanced infrared detectors that cover the LWIR to the visible realm, demonstrates the Cougar-640, a high-performance InGaAs camera for extreme low-light-level imaging applications in the shortwave infrared (SWIR) range. LN2 cooling reduces dark current to lowest levels ever seen. The Cougar’s spectral response covers 0.9 to 1.7μm at a high resolution of 640 x 512 pixels. At Vision 2012, Xenics exhibits in Booth 1D82, Hall 1.

The new Xenics Cougar camera covering the SWIR realm 0.9.to 1.7μm incorporates an in-house designed InGaAs detector XFPA-1.7-640-LN2 featuring 640 x 512 pixels at a pixel pitch of 20μm and full 24 bit ADC. The detector is optimized for 77K liquid nitrogen (LN2) cooling and is based on an SFD (Source Follower per Detector) read-out topology to achieve ultra low noise levels of 15e- (@T = 77K, Tint = 50μs), gain at 2.2 μV/e- and full well of 400.000 e-. Pixel operability is >98 percent.

The Cougar camera offers extremely low dark current specification of less than 10e- per pixel which allows integration times of several hours. Together with the Read While Integrate (RWI) feature, the Cougar is perfectly suited for extremely low-light-level applications such as photoluminescence measurements in semiconductor manufacturing and failure analysis, Raman spectroscopy or astronomy. Exposure time reaches from 5.6μs up to several hours. A non-destructive read-out mode simplifies operation when long integration times are used.

The high-resolution 640 x 512 InGaAs camera features a maximum full frame rate of 1.42 Hz. The frame rate can be increased when a smaller region of interest is selected through the windowing mode. Window size can be arbitrarily defined from 2×4 upward. Read-out mode is Integrate Then Read (cooled or uncooled) or Read While Integrate (77K cooled).

The Cougar setup consists of two modules: a Dewar (178L x 93W x 207H mm³) containing the LN2 cooled InGaAs sensor, and a separate housing for the control and read-out circuitry (40L x 100W x 130H mm³). Camera interfacing is provided via standard CameraLink interface for ease of integration.


About Xenics

Xenics, part of Photonis group, is a pioneer of infrared technology with a proven track record of twenty years. Xenics designs, manufactures and markets infrared imagers, cores and cameras of best-in-class image quality to support machine vision, scientific & advanced research, transportation, process monitoring, safety & security and medical applications. Xenics offers a complete portfolio of line-scan and area-scan products for the vSWIR, SWIR and LWIR ranges. Mastering all critical steps of the manufacturing process with advanced production facilities and in-house know-how on detectors, systems and software development Xenics delivers state-of-the-art solutions and optimized custom designs. Xenics ensures its commitment of doing good to the world by developing solutions for enhancing quality of life and sustainability. As a European vendor with a worldwide sales and service network, Xenics supports its customers with simplified export procedures. More at: xenics.com .