Xenics, a European developer and manufacturer of infrared detectors, haas demonstrated the Cougar-640, an 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 optimised 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.