Friday, March 22, 2019

Mitsubishi Develops MWIR and LWIR Graphene Sensors

Nikkei: Mitsubishi claims it has developed a MWIR sensor having the world's highest responsivity among graphene sensors. Due to an internal graphene FET gain, the responsivity is 10x higher than that of quantum-type IR sensors with no internal amplification. Mitsubishi uses graphene FET and leverages its high electron mobility.

Other than a graphene-based FET, there is "a light-amplifying part" that produces photoelectrons and photoholes and is placed under the graphene. At a very low temperature of, for example, 80K, the responsivity increases even more, by a factor of 100x:


Mitsubishi is also developing a LWIR sensor using a dielectric for the light-amplifying. Existing quantum-type LWIR sensors reduce thermal noise by cooling down to liquid nitrogen temperature. Mitsubishi claims that with its new method, the sensor might be able to work at room temperature:


The original article in Japanese has few more figures:


Here is an earlier Nikkei article on the same topic. Mitsubishi is going to present its work at IDTechEx Show in Berlin, Germany on April 10-11, 2019.

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