Towards infrared depth sensors based on amorphous semiconductors integrable on CMOS

Current optical depth sensing technologies suffer from combining measurement performance with system simplicity and scalable integration at high pixel densities. The intrinsic photomixing detector (IPD) can overcome these issues and enables high precision time-of-flight depth sensing at visible and near-infrared wavelengths based on an electrical referenced nonlinear mixing process in amorphous semiconductors. First depth sensor prototypes demonstrate mixing efficiencies of up to 47%, a mean depth resolution of 5 mm at distances from 0 m to 2 m at 457 nm, and near-infrared detection capabilities down to 450 µW/cm² at 785 nm. The IPD paves the way towards high-performance depth sensing at a simple, scalable, and CMOS-compatible integration platform with pixel fill factors up to 100%.