Self-calibrating photodiodes for integrated and infrared technologies

The EUs Digital strategy considers photonics to be a key enabling technology. Photonic sensors play a vital role in a wide range of areas including industrial manufacturing, healthcare, safety and the automotive industry. As these technology increasingly move towards miniaturisation, there has been a growing demand for integrating photonic sensors onto electronic chips. However, currently no metrological systems are available to calibrate these “photonic integrated circuits” (PICs).

Building on the work of EURAMET projects chipS·CALe and S-CALe Up, industrial requirements will be addressed by the integration of a miniaturised primary standard detector onto a photonic chip. It will be self-calibrating with the ability to operate at room temperature over a wide range (500 nm to 900 nm) providing a “National Metrology Institute on a chip”.

In Earth observation studies, around 2/3rds of the Essential Climate Variables (ECV) used to monitor climate change require an optical measurement but for some aspects, such as atmospheric gas composition and depth, instrumentation lacks the accuracy required to separate the small changes from the natural environmental background. For spectral solar irradiance measurements a self-calibrating detector will also be developed, covering the desired range from the UV (300 nm) to the infra-red (1600 nm). This will provide the required measurement uncertainty for ECV’s (0.1%) whilst also shortening the traceability chain.

The work of the project will provide industry with new tools for on-chip metrology as well as providing the lower uncertainties in measurements made on the ground and in space for many ECVs.