Flexible focal plane arrays for UVOIR wide field instrumentation

TL;DR

This paper discusses the development of deformable, curved detectors for UV to NIR wide field imaging, aiming to enhance image quality, reduce optical system size, and increase design flexibility.

Contribution

It introduces innovative deformable detector technology, demonstrating optical design improvements, technological prototypes, and outlining a five-year development roadmap.

Findings

Improved off-axis image sharpness and resolution.

Successful development of deformable detector prototypes.

Clear future development plan for flexible focal plane arrays.

Abstract

LAM and CEA-LETI are developing the technology of deformable detectors, for UV, VIS or NIR applications. Such breakthrough devices will be a revolution for future wide field imagers and spectrographs, firstly by improving the image quality with better off-axis sharpness, resolution, brightness while scaling down the optical system, secondly by overcoming the manufacturing issues identified so far and by offering a flexibility and versatility in optical design. The technology of curved detectors can benefit of the developments of active and deformable structures, to provide a flexibility and a fine tuning of the detectors curvature by thinning down the substrate without modifying the fabrication process of the active pixels. We present studies done so far on optical design improvements, the technological demonstrators we developed and their performances as well as the future five-years roadmap for these developments.