Defense
Lightweight, high-sensitivity SWIR sensors built with scalable nanomaterials on silicon for next-generation airborne, space, and ground-based defense systems.
Lightweight Integration
All-Weather Visibility
Ultra high unit volumes
Tomorrow’s battlefield will be won by who can see the best. Unlock lightweight, high-sensitivity SWIR sensors for unprecedented deployment scale in airborne, space, and ground-based defense system with our NanoBLACK™on silicon platform.
SWIR imaging is increasingly vital in defense and intelligence applications, where visibility, precision, and spectral awareness are critical. Iris Light’s nanomaterial sensors provide wide spectral coverage from visible to extended SWIR (E-SWIR), delivering high-resolution imaging at room temperature without the need for cryo cooling. Our CMOS-compatible, wafer-scale manufacturing enables production of lightweight, compact systems ideal for drones, CubeSats, soldier portable, and other mobile platforms, without the toxicity or cost.
- Drones and UAVs: Compact and power-efficient, Iris Light’s SWIR imagers enable high-resolution intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) from small airborne platforms. Their scalable design brings advanced spectral sensing, traditionally limited to large aircraft, to drones, CubeSats, and portable defense systems.
- People centric. The key value proposition is high unit volumes (and more affordable) compared to traditional SWIR which is too high for each person to have something
- Soldier Systems: Traditionally SWIR sensors have been too costly for widespread soldier deployment. Our NanoBLACK™ approach allows for room-temperature operation, non-toxic materials, and wafer-scale manufacturing creating SWIR imagers that are compact, rugged, and affordable. This brings enhanced night visibility, target discrimination, and degraded-environment imaging directly to the soldier — not just to vehicles or aircraft.
- Fog & Smoke Visibility: E-SWIR wavelengths penetrate fog, haze, and smoke where visible cameras fail. Iris Light’s nanomaterial innovation in E-SWIR sensors deliver clear imaging in degraded visual environments, improving navigation, targeting, and situational awareness in all-weather conditions.
- Laser Range Gating (IFF): In laser range-gated imaging, Iris Light’s fast-response SWIR sensors provide precise timing and high contrast for Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) and long-range target illumination. Their low-noise, room-temperature operation enhances performance across airborne and maritime platforms.
- Rocket and Missile Tracking: Missile plumes and exhaust signatures emit strongly in the SWIR spectrum. Iris Light’s high-sensitivity sensors capture these signatures with exceptional clarity, enabling accurate trajectory tracking, threat detection, and countermeasure guidance in real time.
FAQs
Discover answers to common questions about our technology or get in touch today.
SWIR stands for Short-Wave Infrared, typically referring to light in the 900 to 2500 nanometer wavelength range. Unlike visible light, SWIR can see through fog, smoke, silicon, and certain polymers, revealing details invisible to standard optical systems. SWIR enables precise imaging, spectroscopy, and sensing by capturing unique material signatures and temperature-independent contrast.
SWIR is becoming a key performance frontier for next-generation optical systems. Its ability to “see beyond” the visible spectrum opens a wide range of applications including: robotic sensor vision, semiconductor manufacturing, industrial inspection, agriculture quality, medical diagnostics, autonomous vehicle LiDAR, and chemical and biological sensing. These systems demand light sources and detectors that operate efficiently in the SWIR band — a challenge for conventional silicon camera materials.Iris Light’s tunable photonic inks are engineered to address exactly that gap. By enabling on-chip light emission and detection within the SWIR range, we make it possible to design smaller, faster, and more scalable photonic devices — unlocking new capabilities across sectors that rely on precision light control.
While visible imagers are made in the hundreds of billions of units per year due to use of silicon CMOS and favorable wafer-economics, SWIR devices have constrained production volumes due to small wafer formats with relatively exotic production methods. This has resulted in expensive end products and limited deployment. Industrial desire to deeply integrate machine vision with SWIR capability into manufacturing is driving unprecedented demand for higher volume SWIR products. Iris Light’s NanoBLACK™ platform is engineered to address exactly that gap. By enabling wafer-scale integration of SWIR imaging materials directly onto silicon wafers, we make it possible to manufacture SWIR-on-Si sensors, unlocking high-volume manufacturing and enabling new capabilities and markets for SWIR imagers.
Black phosphorus (BP) is a unique semiconductor material made of pure, monoelemental phosphorus. BP possesses a widely tunable direct bandgap ranging from the visible to the mid-infrared (0.3 eV to 2 eV). These various wavelength ranges are accessed by engineering the bulk crystal into two-dimensional (2D) nanosheets known as phosphorene. In contrast, many other 2D semiconductor materials are limited in their spectral window due to indirect bandgaps beyond few-atomic layers. State of the art lasers, LEDS, and photodetectors typically require direct bandgaps to achieve the highest levels of performance.
Iris Light has developed our NanoBLACK™ active photonic nanomaterials to pioneer a new paradigm for integrating direct gap opto-electronic devices into large-scale silicon wafer manufacturing.
If left in ambient without encapsulation, black phosphorus is reactive. However, the same is true of traditional opto-electronic semiconductor materials such as GaAs and InP. In practice, these materials are processed in controlled environments and hermetically packaged. Iris Light incorporates many of these well established techniques to process our nanomaterials, resulting in high-quality devices.