Short-wave Infrared Light emitters based on Colloidal Quantum Dot Technology

Optical sensing and imaging has evolved from taking digital images to a powerful metrology, imaging and data acquisitiontechnique by expanding the spectral coverage from the visible to the short-wave infrared (SWIR).

SWIR sensing andimaging is the cornerstone of advanced imaging techniques for 3D visualization, night vision, imaging though adverseweather conditions, biomedical imaging, spectroscopy for food quality and health monitoring, just to name a few.

The hugemarket size of such applications, especially by entering volume markets including consumer electronics and automotive, hasled to the first commercial appearances of low cost CMOS compatible SWIR photodetectors and image sensors.

Yet for therealization of the afore-mentioned technologies the optical source is an equally important and crucial component to beconsidered at system level.

To date, there is a lack of infrared optical sources that are CMOS compatible, low-cost withcompetitive performance over the standard costly epitaxial III-V light emitters.

Moreover high cost and epitaxial growthmanufacturing processes have limited the size and form factor of those sources to small and rigid elements preventing theiruse as high power and large area illumination sources.

SWIRL will undertake this challenge to develop high performancelow-cost SWIR optical sources with tunable emission peaks and spectral bandwidths across the eye-safety SWIR window,exploiting colloidal quantum dot technology.

By leveraging engineering at the nanoscale and solution processed materialswe will develop in TRL4/5 SWIR optical emitters that are low-cost, high efficiency, even rivalling their epitaxial counterparts,and spectrally versatile across the SWIR.

We will further demonstrate their use in key applications related to automotiveindustry as optical sources for active SWIR imaging and in-cabin monitoring in the eye-safety infrared window.