Hybrid colour filters for multispectral imaging

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel hybrid filter technology for multispectral imaging that simplifies fabrication by combining plasmonic and dielectric layers, enabling narrow spectral bands with a single manufacturing process.

Contribution

The paper presents a new hybrid filter design that reduces complexity and improves scalability for multispectral cameras through computational simulation.

Findings

Achieved narrow spectral bands with a single fabrication process.

Demonstrated the feasibility of hybrid filters via simulations.

Simplified manufacturing process for multispectral sensors.

Abstract

Multispectral cameras capture images in multiple wavelengths in narrow spectral bands. They offer advanced sensing well beyond normal cameras and many single sensor based multispectral cameras have been commercialized aimed at a broad range of applications, such as agroforestry research, medical analysis and so on. However, the existing single sensor based multispectral cameras require accurate alignment to overlay each filter on image sensor pixels, which makes their fabrication very complex, especially when the number of bands is large. This paper demonstrates a new filter technology using a hybrid combination of single plasmonic layer and dielectric layers by computational simulations. A filter mosaic of various bands with narrow spectral width can be achieved with single run manufacturing processes (i.e., exposure, development, deposition and other minor steps), regardless of the number of bands.