Short-wave infrared (SWIR) light is a region of the electromagnetic spectrum invisible to the human eye, but which allows to reveal hidden details of the objects it hits. The SWIR vision has countless applications in the automotive, healthcare, industrial automation and agri-food sectors. Unlike visible light (VIS), SWIR experiences less interference from disturbing elements such as fog, dust and smoke. This makes it ideal for automotive applications to increase driver visibility in adverse weather conditions. However, SWIR light is little exploited as the sensors that are able to capture it require the use of materials (mainly Indium Gallium Arsenide InGaAs) very expensive and difficult to integrate with standard silicon-based electronic circuits. To date, SWIR imaging sensors have costs starting from € 10k for cameras with very low resolutions and also reach values of 40k-50k, in the case of cameras with resolutions similar to those for the visible.

EYE4NIR is a spinoff of Politecnico di Milano that aims to develop low-cost dual band VIS/SWIR sensors. Taking advantage of the silicon-based production systems already in use for image sensors for the visible spectrum (used in every laptop, cell phone, webcam, ...) the EYE4NIR technology will allow the obtaining of a sensor of lower cost than the current InGaAs SWIR sensors, and which will have the ability to "see" both visible and SWIR light at the same time.

The sensor developed by EYE4NIR uses a technology that is based on a careful engineering of widely used and easy-to-process semiconductor materials, which can be directly used in current semiconductor production chains, the different layers of materials allow the selective absorption of VIS and SWIR light in the same pixel.The effectiveness of the sensor in distinguishing VIS and SWIR radiation has been demonstrated, bringing the technology to a TRL 4. The team also secured the intellectual property by filing 2 patents.

The startup will initially focus on automotive applications, where lower costs and high production volumes help scale the technology. The solution will then be applicable to all production sectors such as industrial automation for inspections, safety and quality control, agrifood and smart agriculture and machine vision for autonomous vehicles, such as drones.

The goal of EYE4NIR is to become the leader of VIS/SWIR image sensors and make SWIR vision a widespread technology used in people's daily lives.