Sensors & Detectors Articles

Developed in the early 1990s, the silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) is a solid-state photodetector whose sensitivity to light rivals that of a photomultiplier tube (PMT) in a regime where a few hundred...

Silicon photonics is widely considered a key enabling technology for further development of optical interconnect solutions needed to address growing traffic on the internet. From the first submarine...

Given the pace at which technology advances, there always seems to be a learning curve. With the abundance of consumer electronics available, there typically is no right or wrong way to use these...

Light is a versatile tool for investigating physical and chemical processes in nature. Any specific system being analyzed may, through the light it emits or reflects, communicate information about...

Aspheric surfaces are powerful tools that combine the optical corrections of multiple lenses into a single element (Figure 1) and affect performance in ways that spherical optics cannot. For example,...

Any number of medical, industrial, and analytical applications requires the detection of light. Chemiluminescence, bioluminescence, fluorescence, and atomic absorption are just a few, and all require...

All optical spectrometry techniques rely on the measurement of radiant power. The configuration of the instrument varies based on the measurement technique: absorption, emission, luminescence, or...

Radiometry involves several activities. The two most common are the description and measurement of optical radiation, and, starting with the knowledge of some aspects of optical radiation at one...

Manufacturing the laser diode is complicated by the existence of multiple proprietary techniques and intellectual property barriers together with complex device physics and unique materials. ...

Camera resolution depends upon the optical blur diameter and the detector size. Schade combined these to create an equivalent resolution that is a function of Fλ/d where F is the focal ratio,...

Spectral selection is a powerful tool that enhances conventional imaging tremendously. Most imaging systems, including the human eye, are designed to image light over a broad range of the spectrum....

Infrared system design is not, like some circuit design, a synthetic process. One cannot start by stating the problem and proceeding in an orderly fashion to a final solution. Rather, we guess a...

Like other CTDs, the CID imager uses hundreds of thousands (up to 4 million) pixel elements to capture optical images, and converts the light into an electronic charge which may be displayed on a...

That portion of the spectrum that the eye can see — and its rainbow of colors — is rather small, covering approximately 360 to 830 nm. What colors we perceive depends on wavelength, while...

Since their invention in the late 1960s, charge-coupled devices, also called CCDs, have found widespread use in imaging applications. Electronic cameras based on CCD technology are used in...

Photonics Rules of Thumb Scientists and engineers tend to want to answer simple relational questions with a blackboard covered with equations, even when questioners just want a rough estimate to...

If we were to estimate the output of a CCD or thermal camera, we would typically draw an image over the detectors, aligning the image with the detector axes. We show it this way because it’s...

Charged-injection device imagers are metal-oxide semiconductor (MOS) detectors that can be fabricated using PMOS, NMOS and CMOS integrated circuit technology, and may be configured as a...

To Isaac Newton the problem was clear, and in 1704 he realized the effects of atmospheric turbulence on image formation. Just as heat waves shimmering above a hot patch of ground can distort our...

The applications where rapid detection of light is a must are many. They include a wide variety: semiconductor inspection, gene sequencing, oil well logging and high-energy physics. The reasons for...