Wiley Handbook of Science and Technology for Homeland Security, 4 Volume Set

SPECTRALLY ADAPTIVE NANOSCALE QUANTUM DOT SENSORS

WOO-YONG JANG, BILIANA PASKALEVA, MAJEED M. HAYAT, AND SANJAY KRISHNA

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Center for High Technology Materials at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico

1 INTRODUCTION

Advances in hyperspectral (HS) and multispectral (MS) sensing and imaging in the infrared (IR) spectrum have enabled numerous remote-sensing applications. These include military surveillance (i.e. target recognition, identification, and classification), medical imaging (i.e. medical diagnosis), and monitoring geographical terrain, only to name a few. Conventional HS/MS systems offer spectral information of a scene (target or an agent) in a spectral band by sensing a wide range of narrow segments of the IR spectrum in a spectral range of interest. This can be achieved by using a broadband IR detector in conjunction with dispersive optics (e.g. a bank of IR optical filters) that can be utilized to specify the spectral bands to be sensed. Alternatively, multiple sensors, each sensitive to a designated spectral range, can be employed to sense a wide spectral range. However, either one of these complex conventional methods is of relatively large physical size and high cost. Nanoscale and spectrally adaptable sensors are emerging as a highly desirable alternative to conventional MS/HS sensing strategies that feature simplicity through its single-detector nature (or array of identically fabricated detectors) ...