China cuts cost of military-grade infrared chips to as little as a few dozen USD

Infrared thermal imaging detector manufactured in China.

Photo: Handout A research team at a Chinese university has developed a new way to make high-end infrared chips that could slash their cost dramatically and improve the performance of smartphone cameras and self-driving cars.

The key breakthrough was finding a way to make the chips using conventional manufacturing techniques, rather than the exotic, costly materials that were relied on before.

Mass production is set to begin by the end of the year, according to a press release from Xidian University.

The chips detect short-wave infrared (SWIR), which is invisible to the human eye and can penetrate fog, haze and smoke.

Cameras capable of detecting SWIR can take pictures in total darkness and even see through some materials.

This can allow self-driving cars to see through dense fog, let factory scanners spot faulty products through their packaging and stop humanoid robots from bumping into things in the dark.

But this technology carries a prohibitive price tag, which has limited its use to military applications and high-end scientific research – satellite reconnaissance, drone surveillance and missile guidance.

A single chip can cost anywhere from several hundred to several thousand US dollars.

This is because these chips typically rely on expensive indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs), which is hard to integrate with the most widely used manufacturing processes.

On March 29, Xidian University announced that a research team led by Professor Hu Huiyong had successfully taken a novel approach.

They used silicon-germanium and silicon complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor processing – both of which are commonly used to make chips.

According to the researchers, this allowed them to achieve a theoretical cost reduction of up to 99 per cent – which would amount to about US$10 – compared with InGaAs-based chips. “This means we can produce short wave infrared detectors, which were previously prohibitively expensive, using the same methods and cost base as manufacturing smartphone chips,” team member Wang Liming was quoted as saying in the press release.

But matching the results of expensive materials using cheap ones wasn’t easy.

The distance between the atoms in the crystal lattices of silicon and germanium differs by 4.2 per cent.

This mismatch can cause defects in chips and is the main reason this approach to making SWIR chips has not been widely used.

To solve this, the team added buffer layers

原文链接: 南华早报