SiOnyx backgrounder says: "SiOnyx XQE CMOS image sensors provide superior night vision, biometrics, eye tracking, and a natural human interface through our proprietary Black Silicon semiconductor technology. XQE image sensors deliver unprecedented performance advantages in infrared imaging, including sensitivity enhancements as high as 10x today’s sensor solutions.
XQE enhanced IR sensitivity takes advantage of the naturally occurring IR ‘nightglow’ to enable imaging under extreme (0.001 lux) conditions. XQE sensors provide high-quality daytime color as well as nighttime imaging capabilities that offer new levels of performance and threat detection.
As a result, SiOnyx’s Black Silicon platform represents a significant breakthrough in the development of smaller, lower cost, higher performance photonic devices.
The SiOnyx XQE technology is based on a proprietary laser process that creates the ultimate light trapping pixel, which is capable of increased quantum efficiency across the silicon band gap without damaging artifacts like dark current, non-uniformities, image lag or bandwidth limitations.
Compared to today’s CCD and CMOS image sensors, SiOnyx XQE CMOS sensors provide increased IR responsivity at the critical 850nm and 940nm wavelengths that are used in IR illumination. SiOnyx has more than 1,000 claims to the technology used in Black Silicon.
Surface modification of silicon enables SiOnyx to achieve the theoretical limit in light trapping, which results in extremely high absorption of both visible and infrared light.
The result is the industry’s best uncooled low light CMOS sensor that can be used in bright light (unlike standard night vision goggles) and can see and display color and display in high resolution (unlike thermal sensors)."
