Imec introduces advanced spectral image sensors

At the SPIE Photonics West event in San Francisco starting February 10^th , imec (Leuven, Belgium, www2.imec.be/be_en/home.html) will show continued advancement in their hyperspectral CMOS image sensors. The latest imagers are snapshot devices having one spectral filter per pixel, arranged in mosaics and deposited onto a full array of 2 Million pixels with 5.5 µm size. Two versions of the sensors have been developed, a 4 x 4 mosaic with 16 bands in the 470-630nm (visible range), and a 5 x 5 mosaic with 25 bands in the 600-1000 nm range (Visible – NIR range).

Imec’s linescan (100 bands), snapshot tiles (32 bands), and new snapshot 5×5 mosaic (25 bands) hyperspectral image sensors.

The hyperspectral filter structures are processed at wafer-level on standard CMOS, enabling compact, low cost, and mass-producible solutions and are now available as engineering samples. They are used in remote sensing for environment monitoring, medical imaging, food and other material inspection, machine vision, security, and life sciences applications. Andy Lambrechts, program manager at imec, noted that “the new mosaic architecture, and extended spectral range, brings unique advantages compared to our previously announced hyperspectral linescan sensors for applications in which scanning would not be practical.”