Ultra-compact Machine-Learning-driven platform for room temperature mid-wave infrared remote sensing

(a) Objectives and Benefits. This program aims to develop new classes of mid wave infrared (MWIR, 3-5 microns) sensors for Earth Science applications. The proposed effort consists of two thrusts: (i) MWIR detector development, (ii) room temperature MWIR focal plane arrays (FPAs) and development of a novel sensing paradigm, the metasensor, where the FPA is deterministically coupled to the outside world with diffractive metasurface structures. The proposed program aims to advance our ability to detect and image in the MWIR, benefiting Earth Science monitoring of surface temperatures, atmospheric scattering, and vegetation cover. Since modern high-performance MWIR sensors typically require significant cooling for efficient operation, our proposed effort will have immediate impact on the field of remote sensing. The demonstration of a highly efficient, low-noise room-temperature MWIR detector will significantly decrease the size, weight, power, and cost of airborne/space-based remote-sensing. The proposed program will benefit data collection for weather forecasting models and the understanding (and mitigation) of climate change. In the longer-term, the metasensor offers a potentially transformational advance to MWIR imaging. Metasensing will enable multi-modal information collection, drastically reduce the size and complexity of the imager by integrating detectors and front optics within the same static chip, and simultaneously move the tasks related to focusing, aberration correction, etc. from imaging time to software (ML-based) post-processing, thereby enabling future mining of existing data with extra sensing modalities or improved algorithms. (b) Outline of Proposed Work and Methodology The proposed effort will leverage the team's combined expertise in theory, numerical techniques, machine-learning, optical and electronic design, epitaxial growth, nano-fabrication, and optical and electronic characterization. We will demonstrate high external quantum efficiency (EQE) MWIR detectors, operating at room temperature, with significantly decreased dark current and thus high specific detectivity. The detectors' architecture is designed to decouple EQE from detector volume and thus avoid the typical trade-offs that limit infrared (IR) detector design. Further, we propose to quantum engineer IR-absorbing semiconductor superlattices, improving dark current not only by reduced detector volume, but by careful engineering of the absorbing material to minimize high temperature parasitic processes. These high-performance detectors will be integrated with coupling structures, optimized to control the detectors' spectral and polarimetric response. Novel, machine learning-based algorithms will be designed to develop such diffractive coupling structures. We will design, grow, fabricate and characterize proof-of-principle focal plane arrays (FPAs) leveraging our room temperature MWIR detectors, demonstrating our detector architecture's immediate suitability for existing MWIR imaging applications. At the same time, we will explore the novel metasensor architecture. Far from the simple metalenses that mimic refractive optics, albeit in a compact space, the metasensor couples incident light to multiple detector elements (with different wavelength/polarization response) within the MWIR FPA, thereby allowing the platform to simultaneously analyze multiple aspects (frequency, direction, polarization) of incident light with proper software post-processing. We will develop such post-processing techniques based on semi-analytical solutions of Maxwell equations and on machine-learning, aiming to demonstrate multi-modal information processing (scene reconstruction, polarimetric imaging, edge detection, etc) within MWIR metasensors. (c) Period of Performance: 01/01/2023 to 12/31/2025 (d) Technology readiness levels: Room temperature MWIR FPA. Entry: TRL 1-2, planned exit TRL 4-5 MWIR metasensor. Entry: TRL 1, planned exit TRL 4.

Accelerate mission development and reduce risk by developing critical components and subsystems for advanced instruments and observing systems

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