imec products

Human eyesight is, of course, a miracle. Nevertheless, it’s mostly limited to three bands of the electromagnetic spectrum: red, green and blue. It cannot register fine details within these bands – let alone what’s outside the visible continuum, such as infrared.

CMOS technology has made visible imaging compact, low-power and affordable. Just about every smartphone now harbors a digital camera that’s capable of professional photography. But the needs of the market are changing. Applications such as augmented reality and face recognition, autonomous driving and food scanning require a shift from imaging to sensing – from taking a picture to acquiring information. The challenge is to bring these new imaging applications within reach of the consumer technology market, by lowering their cost without compromising their resolution. This is the goal of imec’s Pixel Technology Explore research activities, which break new ground in NIR/SWIR sensing and 3D imaging. Imec intends to develop technologies for companies with a roadmap in innovative image sensors, cameras and smart imaging applications.

For centuries, optical instruments remained bulky and expensive. They were produced by refining mechanical parts, usually in glass, that manipulate the light in order to sense, measure, make projections, ...It’s only recently that there’s an alternative for this traditional approach: flat optics delves into the toolbox of the semiconductor industry. The idea is to create nanostructures that fulfill optical functions. Examples of such functions are focusing and color splitting – at a wavelength scale and with visible as well as infra-red light. Want to dive into this toolbox? Imec is ready to help you with the development and integration of such flat optics components in its state-of-the art cleanrooms. And we can guide you towards large-scale manufacturing.