Application Fields of SWIR Imaging
SURVEILLANCE
Being able to keep at all times a clear situational awareness in harsh environmental conditions, day and night can make a huge difference when defending or protecting people. NIT solutions are specified in OEM military programs and security systems.
- Surveillance in obscurant environments
- Gated Imaging
GATED IMAGING provides the ability to image a specific depth slice of a scene. Applications are multiple, including observations through obscurants (severe weather conditions), estimation of distance, and localization of obstacles (drone detection with background suppression). Imaging devices must be fast enough to cope with the reflected light.
NIT’s SWIR cameras offer at the same time, precision with the shortest effective exposure time, the shortest rise time, and the highest dynamic range on the market enabling to cover a broad number of situations in the field, and any applications, including yours.
Recommended products: WiDy SenS 640, SenS 1280
LASER
No gain adjustment needed. No saturation due to too much intensity.
Laser applications with NIT SWIR camera solutions:
- Laser communications
- Laser Tracking – up to 10 kHz
- Laser alignment & Beam Profiling
- Active Imaging
Unlike usual systems needing constant gain adjustment when changing the laser power, we propose a smart auto gain adjustment and a density free system, reducing, therefore, cost and effort in the setup. We cover a broad spectrum from 900nm to 1700nm. With this spectrum, NIT SWIR camera becomes the ally of any laser processes. NIT technology allows overcoming the usual saturation and blooming effects occurring for any standard camera subjected to high power laser light.
Recommended products: WiDy SWIR 640, WiDy Sens 640, Sens 1280
SEMICONDUCTOR INSPECTION
Using a semiconductor to see through another semiconductor: that’s how it goes with SWIR Band.
It’s not about Superman powers but taking the benefit of the SWIR band as the best wavelength region for semiconductor inspection.
NIT SWIR imaging devices offer an attractive performance/price ratio when it comes to ease the integration into semiconductor production lines.
Inspection has become one of the key processes in the semiconductor industry: Detecting defective items along the production line helps to improve yields and the overall productivity of one of the biggest industry.
For the past years, the SWIR band has been recognized as one of the best wavelength regions for semiconductor inspection. Whether it is for detecting cracks and defect on a wafer or solar cell panels, or for achieving a failure analysis of integrated circuits, InGaAs wavelength (900m- 1700nm) imaging device are suited for seeing through inside silicon.
Inspection has become one of the key process in the semiconductor industry: Detecting defective items along the production line helps to improve yields and the overall productivity of one of the biggest industry. For the past years, the SWIR band has been recognized as one of the best wavelength regions for semiconductor inspection. Whether it is for detecting cracks and defect on a wafer or solar cell panels, or for achieving a failure analysis of integrated circuits, InGaAs wavelength (900m1700nm) imaging device are suited for seeing through inside silicon. However, the SWIR imaging devices must present an attractive performance/price ratio to ease the final integration into the production lines.
Moreover, NIT SWIR imaging devices offer an attractive performance/price ratio when it comes to ease the integration into semiconductor production lines.
Lisa SWIR was specially developed for semiconductor inspection, with the ability of SWIR wavelength to see through silicon. Inspection of silicon wafers or of single dies can be easily set up.
The solar panel both at production and on-site can be inspected by Lisa SWIR providing extremely accurate images of photoluminescence induced by small defects even at low contrast.
Thanks to its small pixel size of 7.5um, Lisa SWIR procures extremely sharp and crisp images of defects in materials at high throughput.
Recommended products: LiSaSWIR 2048, WiDy SenS 640, SenS 1280
WELDING & ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING
Achieving better goods quality and yield through vision has now become widely used for manufacturing industries. The welding and more recently, the additive manufacturing processes, are now massively adopting cameras for inspecting parts or monitoring processes. Characterized by extremely high illumination with strong contrast, smoke and dust, and various of the process (TIG, MIG – MAG, YAG) imaging welding has always been a challenge. With long set-up efforts including neutral density filter use, trade off on exposure time, people have been able to visualize processes, but they are still lacking important details due to the low Dynamic Range of existing cameras.
The NIT MAGIC CAMERAS solves this lack of efficiency and robustness by offering high-quality images of the melt-pool, without any saturation and disturbing circle of light. Filters are not necessary anymore. Thanks to the native High Dynamic Range of the product – up to 140 dB or 120dB for the SWIR products – the welding arc, as well as the bevels, can be seen at the same time in one single image. All the relevant parameters can be monitored without any image processing.
The use of our SWIR Camera, WiDy SenS, brings even more valuable information for additive manufacturing processes thanks to the Infrared band, i.e: 900nm-1700nm. Temperature homogeneity and geometry of the melt pool could be then monitored.
Recommended products: WiDY SenS 640
MICROSCOPY & LIFE SCIENCE
NIT’s broad range of cameras and sensors have been along with scientists in their most critical experiences since NIT creation. Whether you are measuring, detecting, analyzing, or observing, NIT technology will prove to be indispensable solutions in many cases.
The use of our SWIR camera brings even more valuable information for microscopy processes thanks to the Infrared band, i.e: 900nm-1700nm. With SWIR microscopes, observe beyond the standard visible range microscopes.
Low dark current and longer exposure are required because of low signal application.
Recommended products: WiDY SenS 640, HiPe SenS 640, SenS 1280
Biomedical Imaging
SWIR opens new opportunities for deep tissue imaging for In-vivo applications. Traditionally, for deep tissue imaging ionizing radiation is used (X-ray and Y-ray) but poses some risks to biological tissue.
Photoluminescence Imaging is preferred, using fluorescent Dye and excitation laser.
Traditionally Visible and NIR band have been used:
- Visible band (400-650nm) is used only for superficial tissues (strong scattering and absorption).
- NIR band or NIR1 (850-900nm) has been used in the last 20 years.
SWIR or NIR2 (1300-1400nm) has the following advantages:
- Stronger transmission than NIR band
- Lower scattering
- Commercially available and FDA approved dyes show strong emission in the NIR2 band.
Recommended products: WiDy SenS 640, HiPe SenS 640, SenS 1280
THERMOGRAPHY
The industrial sector is the most demanding sector for Thermography in order to monitor processes and increase production quality with high accuracy and high speed. Potential defects can be detected and erroneous operations can be stopped rapidly thanks to inspection. To make these controls and inspections efficient, the set of parameters to be monitored should be selected carefully according to the specificity of each process. To succeed in providing reliable products at the end of the production line, the temperature has to be monitored all along the process, leading often to a large temperature span. In several industries such as steel, glass, ceramic or cement industries, that involves temperatures between 300°C and 1500°C, making the dynamic range of the sensor very critical. New Imaging Technologies (NIT) has developed a complete portfolio of InGaAs sensors and CMOS sensors with High Dynamic Range. The logarithmic pixel structure providing High Dynamic Range exceeding 120dB is capable to map an entire scene with a temperature span from 300°C to 3000°C (i.e: with SWIR sensors) simultaneously. In the glass industry, one single camera enables to check continually molten glass drops at almost 1000°C and glass in containers maintained at nearly 300°C without any operation on the camera.
Recommended products: WiDy SenS 640, HiPe SenS 640, SenS 1280