Gigajot Unveils Commercially Available Quanta Image Sensors

PRNewswire: Gigajot announces its first QIS products, that the company calls the dawn of a new era in solid-state imaging. The new QIS products are capable of photon counting at room temperature while operating at full speed, and achieving high dynamic range – all in small pixel, high resolution formats.  With 5-10x read noise improvement over conventional small pixel image sensors, QIS enables imaging at ultra-low light levels not previously possible.

Gigajot's pioneering QIS products target high performance imaging applications such as scientific, medical, defense, industrial, and space.

The 16MP GJ01611 utilizes a 1.1um pixel to achieve room temperature 0.19e- read noise and less than 0.09 e-/s/pixel dark current, while the 4MP GJ00422 employs a 2.2um pixel and provides 0.27e- read noise with single-exposure dynamic range of 100 dB.

 Leveraging advanced stacked CMOS BSI sensor process, the sensors are capable of photon counting at room temperature without elaborate cooling systems – made possible by industry leading dark current and read noise. Gigajot's proprietary readout architecture enables photon counting cameras to operate at high-speed and low-power. Additionally, the single-exposure HDR mitigates the motion artifacts that result from conventional multi-exposure HDR techniques.

"The ability to do photon counting at room temperature is a game changer for our research efforts in Astrophysics and Quantum Information Science," said Don Figer, Director of Center for Detectors and the Future Photon Initiative in the College of Science, Rochester Institute of Technology. 

GJ00422 and GJ01611 evaluation and camera development are supported by Gigajot's Camera Development Kit (QIS CDK). Available now, the QIS CDK has a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface and user-friendly software, in a small form factor.