High-speed Photon-Number-Resolution Quanta Imaging Sensor Array - SBIR Topic OSW26BZ04-DV005

Funding Amount:

Est. $2,153,927

Deadline to Apply:

August 19th, 2026

ITAR:

The technology within this topic is restricted under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), 22 CFR Parts 120-130, which controls the export and import of defense-related material and services, including export of sensitive technical data, or the Export Administration Regulation (EAR), 15 CFR Parts 730-774, which controls dual use items. Offerors must disclose any proposed use of foreign nationals (FNs), their country(ies) of origin, the type of visa or work permit possessed, and the statement of work (SOW) tasks intended for accomplishment by the FN(s) in accordance with the Announcement. Offerors are advised foreign nationals proposed to perform on this topic may be restricted due to the technical data under US Export Control Laws.

Objective:

Demonstrate a Photon-Number-Resolution pixel array with high counting rates that remains scalable to megapixel size.

Description:

Single-photon counting and timing achieves light detection at the fundamental quantum limit, unlocking next generation capabilities in quantum imaging and environmental sensing. Many applications require counting/timing photons at very high rates (>GHz), leading to instantaneous photon bunching (“pileup”) that causes photons to be missed. The result is data loss, degraded statistics and nonlinearities.

Current detectors mitigate such deluges by breaking the flow of photons onto arrays of many small pixels, thereby reducing the count rate for each individual pixel and enabling reliable counting even for very impulsive signals. They also group counts into macropixels and time-bins to reduce analog-to-digital conversion limitations and off-chip data transfer bandwidth requirements.

However, quantum imaging often looks at time correlations between pairs of photons on femtosecond to picosecond time scales, which register as a single click on a Geiger detector. Photon Number Resolution (PNR) can enable measurement of simultaneous incident photons to provide insight into quantum and statistical properties of light.[1]

Scalable Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detectors (SNSPDs) with PNR provide near ideal performance, but will not be considered for this topic due to cryogenic temperature operation. Quanta Imaging Sensors (QIS) with jots or other CMOS compatible fabrication have demonstrated PNR at room temperature by achieving ultra-low read noise.[2],[3],[4]

A variety of physical processes have demonstrated GHz count rates,[5],[6],[7],[8],[9] and novel circuits have also been developed to advance single-photon detection technologies such as spiking neural network (SNN) neuromorphic readout integrated circuits (ROICs).[10],[11],[12]

The camera architecture must support time-of-flight (ToF) or equivalent depth-ranging modalities, and should be compatible with entangled or correlated photon sources.

This topic seeks an ultimate PNR sensor with the following performance:

Pixel-Level Performance:

• Photon Counting Rate: ≥120 MHz per pixel

• Photon Number Resolution ≥16

• External Quantum Efficiency (EQE): ≥60% between 450 – 550 nm, including fill factor losses

Array & Architecture Scalability:

• Array Size: Scalable up to Megapixels

• Monochromatic

Readout & On-Chip Processing:

• Frame Rate: ≥120 MHz operating in 10 µs duration bursts at up to a 16 kHz repetition rate (i.e. ≥1200 frames in 10 µs, repeated every 62.5 µs).

• Hardware-Level Compression: On-chip accumulation must be able to support the summing of up to a minimum of 500 burst sequences prior to readout, enabling significant compression of raw data volume without sacrificing the frame-to-frame temporal resolution.

Operating temperature between -40 °C to +45 °C.

Overall, the photon capacity of the sensor should be able to process bursts of ≥1016 photons per second; for example, 200 MHz x 32 PNR x 2 MPixels.

Simultaneously, the sensor should have a dark count rate low enough to be able to capture signals as weak as 10⁸ photons per second across the array, with high fidelity.

Initial proposals for this topic should document current state-of-the-art commercial single-photon detector performance for the listed parameters, identify the physical factors limiting current performance, propose developing new detection mechanisms and/or circuit architectures that could exceed current limitations to meet the requirements, and identify the challenges in implementing the proposed solution.

The proposer should make a convincing case that the design is scalable.

PHASE I:

The Phase I effort should demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed concept and reduce risk in the identified implementation challenges.

Conduct detailed simulations of the proposed detector to validate the pixel-level performance.

Develop the schematic for the “3D” burst-frame storage logic and ROIC architecture.

Identify a specific foundry with a manufacturing pathway for eventual commercialization and outline your test-plan with available hardware to demonstrate a prototype’s performance.

This topic is accepting both Phase I and Direct to Phase II (DP2) proposals.

Proposers interested in submitting a DP2 proposal must provide documentation to substantiate that the scientific and technical merit and feasibility described above has been met and describe the potential commercial applications.

DP2 documentation may include:

• Technical reports describing results and conclusions of existing work

• Presentation materials and/or white papers

• Technical papers

• Test and measurement data

• Prototype designs/models

PHASE II:

Finalize the Graphic Database System II (GDSII) layout for a small array and submit it for fabrication as part of a Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) run at a foundry.

Through laboratory testing and modeling, demonstrate the prototype meets the performance requirements.

Demonstrate the logic for stacking/scaling the architecture and create a roadmap towards fabricating a Mpixel array.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS:

Phase III will scale the production to Mpixel arrays in a commercial foundry.

The camera technology is directly applicable to high resolution photon detection applications such as laser communications and high-rate quantum key distribution.

It is also well suited to extend the envelope of performance for high dynamic range sensing where an initial bright reflection from a laser pulse exponentially decays to photon starved detection such as fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) in biomedical imaging and environmental sensing LiDAR.

Who will win?

If you can achieve the objective above better than any other company on the market, you have a very high-likelihood of success and should apply.

Who is eligible to apply?

Any company that meets the following criteria:

• For-profit company

• U.S.-owned and controlled.

• 500 or fewer employees (including affiliates)

How Can BW&CO Help?

1) End-to-end support including, strategy, writing of the full proposal, and administrative & compliance support.

2) Proposal strategy and review.

3) Administrative & compliance support.

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