Proof of Concept Grant

The European Research Council, in its efforts to help ERC grant-holders to bridge the gap between their research and the earliest stage of a marketable innovation, created the Proof of Concept (PoC) funding scheme for researchers who have already been awarded an ERC grant. Not only does this program help ERC grantees to explore the innovation potential of their research and/or commercialize the results of their ERC-funded research, the program complements the efforts of ICFO’s Knowledge and Technology Transfer Unit (KTT), which proactively searches for ways to translate newly generated knowledge into new technologies.

ICREA Prof at ICFO Gerasimos Konstantatos has been awarded his third PoC to date, the twelfth award of this kind for ICFO since the launch of the program, for the project titled SWIRL. The main goal of this project is to develop high performance, low-cost SWIR optical sources based on colloidal quantum dot technology.

Optical sensing and imaging has evolved from taking digital images to a powerful metrology, imaging, and data acquisition technique by expanding the spectral coverage from the visible to the short-wave infrared (SWIR). SWIR sensing and imaging is the cornerstone of advanced imaging techniques for 3D visualization, night vision, imaging though adverse weather conditions, biomedical imaging, spectroscopy for food quality and health monitoring, just to name a few. The huge market size of such applications, especially by entering volume markets including consumer electronics and automotive, has led to the first commercial appearances of low cost CMOS compatible SWIR photodetectors and image sensors. Yet for the realization of the afore-mentioned technologies the optical source is an equally important and crucial component to be considered at a system level.

To date, there is a lack of infrared optical sources that are CMOS compatible, low-cost, and with competitive performance over the standard costly epitaxial III-V light emitters. Moreover, high cost and epitaxial growth manufacturing processes have limited the size and form factor of those sources to small and rigid elements preventing their use as high power and large area illumination sources. SWIRL will undertake the challenge to develop high performance low-cost SWIR optical sources with tunable emission peaks and spectral bandwidths across the eye-safety SWIR window, exploiting colloidal quantum dot technology. By leveraging engineering at the nanoscale and solution processed materials, the project will develop in TRL4/5 SWIR optical emitters that are low-cost, high efficiency, even rivalling their epitaxial counterparts, and spectrally versatile across the SWIR. It will further demonstrate their use in key applications related to automotive industry as optical sources for active SWIR imaging and in-cabin monitoring in the eye-safety infrared window.