Leuven, 15 April 2018 — Xenics, Europe’s leading developer and manufacturer of advanced infrared detectors, cameras and customized imaging solutions from the SWIR to the LWIR realm, makes its way to Orlando for the SPIE Defense and Commercial Sensing Expo. Returning for the second time this year, the XLIN-FC high-speed SWIR line scan detectors series will be presented during the event. XLIN-FC recently won the Image Sensors Europe Awards for the category “Biggest Innovator in the Image Sensor Industry”. Xenics is also pleased to announce a significant improvement in the quality of its detectors and resulting cameras. Xenics exhibits in booth 1515 at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center.
Significant improvement in SWIR image quality
In line with its continued focus on customer-centricity, Xenics recently made improvements to its production capabilities and processes. This includes increases in clean room space, optimizing and reviewing processing techniques, as well as the use of new, modernized equipment. The resulting benefit is evident by a significant reduction of dark current in the standard InGaAs SWIR detectors produced by Xenics.
What does this development mean to customers?
The detectors with improved dark current performance will soon be introduced in the Bobcat 640 cameras and Cheetah TE3 camera. These detectors will eventually find their way into all InGaAs SWIR cameras, including the vSWIR (visible enhanced short-wave infrared) models with extended response into the visible range.
At no additional costs customers will be receiving higher quality SWIR cameras, specifically in image quality where the detectors and cameras exhibit:
- a better signal-to-noise ratio;
- a larger dynamic range;
- a lower noise in the shot noise dominant region.
Fastest SWIR linescan detector
Bringing challenging requirements of modern day applications in harmony, the XLIN-FC series is the latest family of SWIR linescan detectors from Xenics. Using flip-chip (FC) type hybridization, two high speed detector types are available:
- XLIN-FC R with rectangular pixels for spectroscopy applications, and
- XLIN-FC SQ with square pixels for machine vision inspection applications.
The detectors operate in low illumination conditions thanks to a new high-sensitivity ROIC (read-out integrated circuit) developed in-house by Xenics. The InGaAs photodetectors also exhibit a high QE in the 900 to 1700 nm wavelength range.
High Speed, High Resolution, Low Noise
The XLIN-FC comes in three different resolutions: 512, 1024 or 2048 pixels. Fast in-line inspection is guaranteed with the world-record line rate of up to 400 kHz, for all three resolutions. Five gain settings are available to optimize performance (sensitivity and dynamic range) in a specific application. In highest gain mode, a very low read noise of 70 electrons can be achieved. The high dynamic range mode is characterized by a maximum signal-to-noise range of more than 3000.
XLIN-FC stands as a major milestone for the SWIR system community looking for devices which are not only fast but also have excellent noise performances. The XLIN-FC was also nominated for the SPIE PRISM Awards and the Image Sensors Europe Awards, the latter in which it later won.
