Deep reactive Ion Etching of Nb2O5/SiO2 multilayer structures for multispectral imaging devices

Multispectral or hyperspectral images allow acquiri ng new information that could not be acquired using colored images and, for example, identifying chemic al species on an observed scene using specific high ly selective thin film filters. Those images are commo nly used in numerous fields, e.g. in agriculture or homeland security and are of prime interest for ima ging systems for onboard scientific applications (e .g. for planetology). Those instruments are generally compo sed with a rotating filters wheel placed inside the imaging system. However, it is obvious that these r otating filters wheels are a bulky and heavy soluti n hat make them non optimal solution for onboard applicat ions. To overcome this problem, a solution is the fabrication of pixelated optical filters, similar t o he Bayer filters used for color cameras but usin g pecific thin film filters technologies (Fig. 1).