Program Summary
Nearly all military-fielded imaging systems contain detector arrays fabricated using planar processes developed for electronic integrated circuits, resulting in the need to use large and complex optics to properly bring imaged objects into focus. Recent industry-led advancements have resulted in modestly curved, small-area, visible-light image sensors. The Focal arrays for Curved Infrared Imagers (FOCII) program plans to build upon the visible sensor advancements from industry by extending this capability towards large format cryogenically cooled infrared imagers with extreme curvatures to vastly improve performance while reducing the weight, volume, and cost of optics.
While curved imagers have been attempted by the community in the past, the approaches used were not able to produce commercially scalable, large format devices with small radius of curvatures while maintaining high performance. FOCII seeks to develop and demonstrate scalable technologies for curving existing large format, high performance infrared focal plane arrays to a small radius of curvature to maximize performance as well as demonstrate curving of smaller format focal plane arrays to an extreme radius of curvature to enable the smallest form factors possible while maintaining exquisite performance.