Single pixel infrared camera using a carbon nanotube photodetector

Infrared (IR) cameras have versatile applications, but their applications were limited by the performance of photodetectors. Carbon nanotube (CNT) has been used to develop high performance IR detectors with high switching speed, low noise, and non-cryogenic cooled operation. However, it is very difficult to fabricate large scale CNT photodetector array that can be integrated in traditional IR camera structures. In order to utilize the outstanding performance of CNT photodetectors and overcome the fabrication difficulties, a single pixel IR camera system was presented: IR images irradiated on a digital micromirror device (DMD) array, which generates measurement matrixes according to compressive sensing algorithm; the sum of the projecting information from the DMD will be measured by a single CNT photodetector; the original image could be recovered through compressive sensing reconstruction algorithm. An IR image with size of 30x30 was recovered using this system with only 500 times of measurements. This work presents a novel imaging platform to effectively capture IR images. © 2011 IEEE.