Infrared camera based on a curved retina

Delphine Dumas (1) , Manuel Fendler (1) , Frédéric Berger (1) , Baptiste Cloix (1) , Cyrille Pornin (1) , Nicolas Baier (1) , Guillaume Druart (2) , Jérôme Primot (2) , Etienne Le Coarer (3)

1 CEA-LETI - Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives - Laboratoire d'Electronique et de Technologie de l'Information
2 ONERA - The French Aerospace Lab [Palaiseau]
3 IPAG - Institut de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble

Design of miniature and light cameras requires an optical design breakthrough to achieve good optical performance. Solutions inspired by animals’ eyes are the most promising. The curvature of the retina offers several advantages, such as uniform intensity and no field curvature, but this feature is not used. The work presented here is a solution to spherically bend monolithic IR detectors. Compared to state-of-the-art methods, a higher fill factor is obtained and the device fabrication process is not modified. We made an IR eye camera with a single lens and a curved IR bolometer. Images captured are well resolved and have good contrast, and the modulation transfer function shows better quality when comparing with planar systems.

Mots clés: INFRARED; SENSOR; CURVED

Domaines: Optique / photonique

Delphine Dumas, Manuel Fendler, Frédéric Berger, Baptiste Cloix, Cyrille Pornin, et al.. Infrared camera based on a curved retina. Optics Letters, 2015, 37 (4), pp.653-655. ⟨10.1364/OL.37.000653⟩. ⟨hal-01226486⟩