Spectrally tunable pixel sensors

摘要

They are here reported the developments and experimental results of fully operating matrices of spectrally tunable pixels based on the Transverse Field Detector (TFD). Unlike several digital imaging sensors based on color filter arrays or layered junctions, the TFD has the peculiar feature of having electrically tunable spectral sensitivities. In this way the sensor color space is not fixed a priori but can be real-time adjusted, e.g. for a better adaptation to the scene content or for multispectral capture. These advantages come at the cost of an increased complexity both for the photosensitive elements and for the readout electronics. The challenges in the realization of a matrix of TFD pixels are analyzed in this work. First experimental results on an 8×8 (× 3 colors) and on a 64×64 (× 3 colors) matrix will be presented and analyzed in terms of colorimetric and noise performance, and compared to simulation predictions.