Terasense Tera-4096 terahertz imaging camera

The Tera-4096 terahertz imaging camera from Terasense has a large 4096 pixels (64 x 64 array) imaging sensor. The camera comes with a pixel size of 1.5 x 1.5 mm, responsivity of 50 kV/W, noise equivalent power 1 nW/√Hz, a certified frequency range 50–700 GHz and is 5 V USB-powered making it a suitable terahertz imaging camera where high-speed image acquisition rates of up to 5000 fps are required.

There is an increasing interest in THz imaging technology in the industrial areas of manufacturing process control, product and material inspection, food inspection, hidden defects inspection, petrol and oil quality control, as well as OEM applications.

It can also be used for detecting the contents of packages or sealed documents, the detection of concealed weapons and explosives, evaluation of biological threats and airline passenger screening, as well as environmental sensing, pollution detection, plasma diagnostics, and chemistry and biochemistry applications.

The detectors are fabricated with a GaAs high-mobility heterostructure in the standard semiconductor cycle using conventional optical lithography. The detection mechanism is based on excitation of plasma oscillations in a two-dimensional electron system with subsequent rectification. The rectification takes place on special defects made in the electron system.

The camera is an active detecting device and requires an external THz source. Terasense offers sub-terahertz wave sources based on IMPATT technology using 100 GHz compact IMPATT-diode generators with an output power up to 100 mW as an illumination source.