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Since 1997, Sofradir has been working with Thales Research & Technologies (TRT) to develop and implement Quantum Well Infrared Photodetectors (QWIP) as an alternative and complementary offer with Mercury Cadmium Telluride (MCT) Long Wave (LW) detectors, to provide large LW staring arrays. Thanks to the low dark current technology developed by TRT, the QWIP detectors can be worked at FPA temperature above 73K, enabling the development of new compact IR cameras thanks to the use of compact microcoolers, and today, Sofradir is entering production with these highly compact QWIP components.For the Long Wave applications, SOFRADIR offers the European TV/4 format with the VEGA-LW detector (25µm pitch 384×288 IDDCA) and the full TV format with the SIRIUS-LW detector (20µm pitch 640×512 IDDCA). The first one is under production for several hundreds of units, to equip the Catherine-XP thermal imager from Thales. The second one has been initially developed for the Catherine-MP high resolution (SXGA) thermal imager and is ready for production. Both detectors present highly uniform performances and sharp images with NETD in the 50mK range when working around 75K at video frame rate. The TV/4 VEGA detector is also offered as a demonstrator for the Mid Wave applications, with a QWIP array adapted to this waveband. In the same time, a dual band MW-LW similar array is developed with spatial coherence, and is currently under demonstration. The performances of these four QWIP detectors are reviewed in this paper.

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The performance of an InfraRed (IR) system is based on a high spatial resolution and on a high thermal resolution.An increase in spatial resolution means an increase in number of pixels, a decrease in detector pitch and an increase in the detector pixel MTF. Regarding thermal resolution increase, it will be achieved mainly by an increase in the maximum quantity of charges which can be stored in the silicon read-out circuits for 2D staring arrays.At present, only cooled detectors answer this need of high performance detectors, such as 2D arrays with TV format resolution and high NETD.In this paper these trends regarding high performance are discussed and recent IRFPA results at Sofradir are presented.Finally, a comparison with uncooled detectors, also processed at Sofradir, is presented, to outline the remaining gap between both types of detectors.

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