Uncooled Thermal Imaging Detectors and Systems

Level: Intermediate Length: 6.5 hours Format: Online Intended Audience: This material is intended for engineers, scientists, and managers who need a background knowledge of uncooled IR technologies, for those who need to be able to evaluate those technologies for usefulness in particular applications, and for those working in the field who wish to deepen their knowledge and understanding. Anyone concerned with current and future directions in thermal imaging or involved in the development of IR detector technology or advanced uncooled IR system concepts will find this course valuable. The course has a significant mathematical content designed to illustrate the origin of the principles involved, but knowledge of the mathematics is not required to understand the concepts and results. Description: The success of uncooled infrared imaging in commercial and military markets has greatly increased the number of participants in the field, and, consequently, the variety of products available and in development. The intent of this course is to provide attendees a broad view of the field as well as an in-depth look at important technologies. The course describes the fundamentals of uncooled IR imaging arrays, emphasizing resistive bolometric and ferroelectric/pyroelectric detectors, but also including a number of innovative technologies such as thermally activated cantilevers, thin films with temperature-dependent optical transmission properties, and thermal-capacitive detectors. Students will learn the fundamentals of uncooled IR sensors, how the various technologies operate, the merits and deficiencies of the different technologies, quantitative metrics for evaluating and comparing performance, and how key factors influence those metrics. The course also explores the limits of performance of uncooled IR imaging, as well as trends to be expected in future products. To increase the utility of the material, this course has been updated to provide a step-by-step overview of on selecting the type and characteristics of an uncooled Focal Plane Array (FPA) for an example system. Learning Outcomes: This course will enable you to: - describe the operation of uncooled IR detectors and basic readout circuits - evaluate performance in terms of responsivity, noise, noise equivalent temperature difference, minimum resolvable temperature, and response time - gauge the fundamental limits to their performance, including temperature-fluctuation noise and background fluctuation noise - compare theory with measured performance of the uncooled arrays - evaluate practical issues and limitations of current technology - ascertain the state of development of new IR technologies by asking the right questions - differentiate well-developed concepts from ill-conceived notional concepts - identify the uncooled IR technology best suited to your needs - assess the performance potential of novel IR imaging technologies - evaluate quantitatively the performance of a wide variety of uncooled IR detectors - summarize construction details from the technical literature - select the type and characteristics of an uncooled FPA for an example system Instructor(s): Charles M. Hanson has a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Georgetown University. Having retired as CTO of L-3 Infrared Products, he now consults and works short-term projects related to thermal imaging. He has held government and industrial positions in infrared imaging for more than 50 years. He is a past chairman of Military Sensing Symposia (MSS) Passive Sensors and until recently co-chair of the SPIE Infrared Technology and Applications conference. He holds 45 U.S. patents in infrared and related technologies and has published numerous technical papers at SPIE and elsewhere. SPIE online courses are on-demand and self-paced, with access for one year. For more information visit: spie.org/education/online-courses