Long-wavelength 256/spl times/256 GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well infrared photodetector (QWIP) palm-size camera

A 9 /spl mu/m cutoff 256/spl times/256 palm-size quantum well infrared photodetector (QWIP) camera weighing only 2.5 lbs, and using 5.5 W of power has been demonstrated. Excellent imagery, with a noise equivalent differential temperature (NE/spl Delta/T) of 23 mK has been achieved. It is well known that QWIP has very low 1/f noise, high operability, and uniformity. As a result, this camera uses a prerecorded nonuniformity correction table (i.e., gains and offsets) stored in its read-only-memory during operation, which enabled the miniaturization of this camera. In this paper, we discuss the development of this very sensitive long-wavelength infrared (LWIR) camera based on a GaAs/AlGaAs QWIP focal plane array (FPA) and its performance in terms of quantum efficiency, NE/spl Delta/T, MRDT, uniformity, and operability.