PIXELEXX SYSTEMS, INC — Department of Energy SBIR Phase II: C48-03b

Description

The changing global nuclear security landscape requires new imaging tools for remote detection applications. Integrating multiple imaging applications into one sensor has that advantage of reducing unmanned aerial vehicle payloads which can result in enhanced, streamlined data collection with fewer flights. While gathering different optical field signatures such as intensity, wavelength, and polarization can provide a detailed understanding of objects and activities in a scene, combing different physical measurement techniques is fraught with design tradeoffs. Different aspects of image quality (e.g., information about incident photons’ spatial coordinates, intensity, wavelength, time, and polarization) need to be balanced with weight, size and ability to withstand environmental damage as well as the need for efficient data transmission and the ability to make sense of the huge amounts of information collected. This proposal utilizes wavelength- and subwavelength-sized Mie photo sensor pixels to integrate multiple, high resolution, imaging modalities into a single, compact and low power snapshot imaging device that exceeds the performance of current systems and enables improved system footprint size/weight/power (SWaP) metrics. The Mie photo sensor characteristics allow for new and powerful array designs which can be used to create novel multimodal imaging systems tailored to the specific imaging application. Importantly, with the dramatically improved structure and device physics of the photo sensing element, more visual data (e.g., spectral, polarimetric) can be collected within an imaging array without increasing the size of the focal plane array. Phase I demonstrated that different shaped pixels have unique, complex response patterns to different wavelengths and polarizations and began development of the required fabrication processes. Phase II has focused on implementing the fabrication process chain to develop an 80 x 80 testing array. Phase IIA proposes developing an active pixel architecture that delivers high performance without compromising the scaling gains. This novel imaging system would play an important role in the detection and characterization of global nuclear security threats, cross-cutting functions and foundational capabilities across nonproliferation, counterterrorism, and emergency response mission areas, enabling effective emergency response, advanced safeguards, efficient treaty verification, and other government applications. It also has important commercial remote sensing applications including precision agriculture, security, and land management.