| Abstract Scope |
Infrared vision technologies remain constrained by fundamental trade-offs in cost, scalability, and functionality, largely due to their reliance on epitaxially grown semiconductors and frame-based imaging architectures. Colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) offer a transformative alternative: a solution-processable materials platform capable of low-cost, wafer-scale integration with spectral tunability spanning the infrared. Yet, their full potential extends beyond material substitution toward redefining how vision systems acquire and process information.
This talk presents a new direction in CQD research: bio-inspired, event-driven vision systems that emulate the biological retina. We demonstrate an artificial retinal circuit based on CQDs that reproduces the function of amacrine cells in the bipolar-to-ganglion pathway, generating transient spike outputs only in response to temporal changes in illumination. By suppressing redundant steady-state signals, this architecture enables sparse, asynchronous sensing with inherent advantages in speed, bandwidth, and energy efficiency over conventional CMOS imagers. |