Mid- (3 to 5 µm) and long-wave (8 to 12 µm) infrared focal plane arrays have found a place in numerous security and military applications that require night-vision capability. Single-color detectors have been common, but monolithic two-color devices offer several advantages, such as the ability to detect the absolute temperature map of a scene.
Two-color detectors have been demonstrated using mercury cadmium telluride (MCT) and quantum-well detectors. Now a group at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque -- in collaboration with researchers from its start-up company, Zia Laser Inc., the University of Texas at Austin and BAE Systems in Nashua, N.H. -- has developed a two-color detector based on quantum dots...