Black silicon with 100x the sensitivity of normal silicon
Alfred Molon
sensitivity of standard silicon (sorry article in German only):
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Schwarzes-Silizium-Sensor-Material-der-
Zukunft--/meldung/126940
Not sure what this means exactly - perhaps that future cameras will have
a base ISO of 10000 and will go up to ISO 160000, 320000 or 640000?
--
Alfred Molon
------------------------
Olympus 50X0, 8080, E3X0, E4X0, E5X0, E30 and E3 forum at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MyOlympus/
http://myolympus.org/ photo sharing site
Mark F
<alfred...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Apparently a new material has been developed which has 100 times the
> sensitivity of standard silicon (sorry article in German only):
>
> http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Schwarzes-Silizium-Sensor-Material-der-
> Zukunft--/meldung/126940
The material is from SiOnyx, which is evidentially a company in the
United States. See this page:
http://www.sionyx.com/detectors.asp
and the rest of the site. (I am just giving a link to an English
language site that discusses the material - I know nothing about the
company itself or the materials and processes described.)
Paul Furman
This is kind of a venture capital marketing ad but:
http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2008/10/12/sionyx-brings-black-silicon-into-the-light-material-could-upend-solar-imaging-industries/
"But [solar power is] the “long shot” application for the material,
Metcalfe acknowledges. Closer in is the possibility of major sensitivity
improvements in imaging applications such as night vision, surveillance,
digital cameras, and medical imaging. Saylor says that the company has
negotiated strategic partnerships with two “industry leaders,” and
though he won’t name names, he says one of them is active in the medical
imaging area."
--
Paul Furman
www.edgehill.net
www.baynatives.com
all google groups messages filtered due to spam
GregS
Certainly medical imaging could benefit. The problem other than sensitivity,
is array sizes and speed. Too much data screws everything up. What,
with nano dots and flares, we got some crazy stuff going.
greg
Don Stauffer
> Apparently a new material has been developed which has 100 times the
> sensitivity of standard silicon (sorry article in German only):
>
> http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Schwarzes-Silizium-Sensor-Material-der-
> Zukunft--/meldung/126940
>
> Not sure what this means exactly - perhaps that future cameras will have
> a base ISO of 10000 and will go up to ISO 160000, 320000 or 640000?
I think silicon already has a quantum efficiency of better than 30%.
Seems to me the maximum sensitivity possible could only be three times that.
Alfred Molon
says...
Well, this graph
http://1.2.3.9/bmi/www.heise.de/bilder/126940/0/1
shows an improvement in responsivity (A/W) of about 100 with respect to
standard silicon. The vertical scale is logarythmic.
J. Clarke
Reading the fine print on their site, it looks like most of those huge
performance gains are in the infrared region, not visible.
> greg
--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)
Alfred Molon
> Reading the fine print on their site, it looks like most of those huge
> performance gains are in the infrared region, not visible.
According to this graph the gains are over the entire spectrum from UV
to IR:
http://1.2.3.9/bmi/www.heise.de/bilder/126940/0/1
Rich
news:MPG.23f64b882...@news.supernews.com:
> Apparently a new material has been developed which has 100 times the
> sensitivity of standard silicon (sorry article in German only):
>
> http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Schwarzes-Silizium-Sensor-Material-der-
> Zukunft--/meldung/126940
>
> Not sure what this means exactly - perhaps that future cameras will have
> a base ISO of 10000 and will go up to ISO 160000, 320000 or 640000?
Regular silicon is already about 40% efficient in the visible wavelengths.
How is 100x possible, unless they are talking about some kind of
multiplication happening?
Alfred Molon
> Regular silicon is already about 40% efficient in the visible wavelengths.
Quantum efficiency is actually below 30%.
> How is 100x possible, unless they are talking about some kind of
> multiplication happening?
If you read the article Paul Furman posted, they are talking about a
single photon generating many electrons, i.e. quantum efficiencies well
above 100%.
Me
> In article <gmhoi...@news2.newsguy.com>, J. Clarke says...
>
>> Reading the fine print on their site, it looks like most of those huge
>> performance gains are in the infrared region, not visible.
>
> According to this graph the gains are over the entire spectrum from UV
> to IR:
> http://1.2.3.9/bmi/www.heise.de/bilder/126940/0/1
>
the IR spectrum.
The "100x more sensitive" statement is wrong, as can only imply that the
invention breaks the first and second laws of thermodynamics, however
some potential investors don't worry about such trivial things.
Alfred Molon
Paul Furman
> In article <498c53be$0$33218$815e...@news.qwest.net>, Don Stauffer
> says...
>> Alfred Molon wrote:
>>> Apparently a new material has been developed which has 100 times the
>>> sensitivity of standard silicon (sorry article in German only):
>>>
>>> http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Schwarzes-Silizium-Sensor-Material-der-
>>> Zukunft--/meldung/126940
>>>
>>> Not sure what this means exactly - perhaps that future cameras will have
>>> a base ISO of 10000 and will go up to ISO 160000, 320000 or 640000?
>>
>> I think silicon already has a quantum efficiency of better than 30%.
>> Seems to me the maximum sensitivity possible could only be three times that.
>
> Well, this graph
> http://1.2.3.9/bmi/www.heise.de/bilder/126940/0/1
>
> shows an improvement in responsivity (A/W) of about 100 with respect to
> standard silicon. The vertical scale is logarythmic.
That link is funky, try: http://www.heise.de/bilder/126940/0/1
What's the source for that?
Alfred Molon
says...
The graph was in the heise.de article. The source is SiOnyx.