29 Apr

Andor iXon Ultra Blue EMCCD – The World’s Most Sensitive Camera for Blue & Near-UV Detection

Oxford Instruments, leading provider of high technology products and services for research and industry, has today announced the launch of iXon Ultra Blue, a back-illuminated single photon sensitive EMCCD camera with significantly boosted QE across the 200 – 450nm wavelength range.

Andor iXon Ultra Blue EMCCD: significantly boosted Blue/UV response, single photon sensitivity, high-speed, -100°C vacuum cooling.

Drawing upon decades of market leadership in ultra-sensitive EMCCD technology, the new Andor iXon Ultra Blue camera offers a significant enhancement in QE response across the blue and near-UV range, ideal for cutting edge applications such as ion trap quantum computing research and semiconductor metrology.

iXon Ultra Blue features a choice of back-illuminated EMCCD sensor formats; 1018x1018, 13 µm pixel or 506x506, 16 µm pixel. Modes for overclocking of the pixel readout rate are readily available for accelerated frame rates. Additionally, Andor’s ‘Crop Mode’ can be employed to further boost frame rates from a user defined sub-region, for example pushing the iXon Ultra Blue 888 model to 679 fps from a 128 x 128 region of interest.

The camera also benefits from market-leading iXon Ultra cooling down to -1000C, ensuring minimization of darkcurrent contribution and permitting usage for long exposure conditions. Furthermore, thermal and clock induced charge events have been minimized for enhanced discrimination of single photons events in quantum entanglement experiments. Minimal data transfer latency can be accessed via an additional Camera Link Output port, facilitating direct access to data for ‘on the fly’ processing and fast feedback loops. iXon Ultra Blue also offers 2-in-1 Flexibility; EMCCD-mode for single photon sensitivity at speed and CCD-mode for long exposure capture of weak signal.

The iXon Ultra platform comes loaded with smart camera features: Count Convert allows data to be presented in electrons or incident photons; OptAcquire presents a series of one-click preset application-optimized configurations; FPGA timestamp hardware-generates a timestamp with10ns accuracy.

Dr. Colin Coates, Head of Product Management, stated:

“iXon Blue Ultra presents a compelling and unparalleled solution for a range of applications that benefit from blue and near-UV ultra-sensitivity, including trapped ion quantum computing, semiconductor metrology, forensic science, atmospheric science, UV spectroscopy on high bandgap semiconductors, as well as astronomical observations of UV-emissions from stars, nebulae and interstellar matter.”