A 2 kfps Sub-µW/Pix Uncooled-PbSe Digital Imager With 10 Bit DR Adjustment and FPN Correction for High-Speed and Low-Cost MWIR Applications Josep Maria Margarit , Student Member , IEEE, Germán V ergara, Víctor Villamayor, Raúl Gutiérrez-Álvarez, Carlos Fernández-Montojo, Lluís Terés, and Francisco

Abstract

Mid-wavelength infrared (MWIR) thermography is an emerging technology with promising application ss u c ha si n - dustrial monitoring, medicine and automotive, but its use in high- speed cameras is not yet widespread due to the lack of inexpensive sensor integration solut ions and their common re liance on bulky cooling mechanisms. This work fil ls the gap by presenting a mono- lithic uncooled high-speed image r based on vapor-phase deposi- tion lead selenide (VPD PbSe) photoconduc tors and a fully digital and configurable CMOS read-out integrated circuit (ROIC) to op- erate the MWIR imager. This ROIC features cancellation of PbSe dark current, compensation of its outpu t capacitance and correc- tion of the fixed pattern noise (FPN ) caused by process non-unifor- mities in CMOS fabrication and detector deposition. The low-cost 80 × 80 imager has been integrated usin g0 . 3 5µ m2 P 4 Ms t a n - dard CMOS technology and PbSe detector post-processing with 135 µm pixel pitch and 68% fill factor values. Experimental opto- electrical performance exhibits 10 bit real-time FPN compensation and DR calibration over the entire focal plane operating at 2 kfps, sub-0.5 LSB inter-pixel crosstalk, sub-µW pixel power consump- tion, and an overall figure of m erit of 55 mK × ms.