CMOS SPADs have appeared in 2003 but it is only the availability of deep-submicron SPAD technology that has made megapixel SPAD cameras possible. Large-format SPAD image sensors have enabled more applications and the introduction of proximity sensing is accelerating the process, so much so that today SPADs are in almost every smartphone and the promise is that they will be in every car by 2022. The digital nature of SPADs and the increased density of computation over multiple silicon layers will soon enable deep-learning processors on chip, thus enabling complex processing while reducing power consumption. Another recent trend is the use of SPADs in qubit readout and control, thus making them amenable to interface with quantum processors, due to the capability of operating normally at cryogenic temperatures. The talk will conclude with a technical and economic perspective for SPAD imagers and a vision statement for photon counting in CMOS and other hybrid technologies.
We present a 1 megapixel single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) camera featuring 3.8 ns time gating and 24 kfps frame rate for 1-bit images, fabricated in 180 nm CMOS image sensor technology. The SPAD sensor was used to capture 2D and 3D scenes over 2 m with depth resolution of 5.4 mm and precision better than 7.8 mm (rms). We demonstrate extended dynamic range in dual exposure operation mode and show spatially overlapped multi-object detection in single-photon time-gated time-of-flight experiments. We further demonstrate applications of the megapixel SPAD camera for fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) and light-in-flight imaging.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.