[MEGAFRAME] April 2010: MEGAFRAME was selected as one of "12 outstanding Commission-funded FET projects" showcased at the European Parliament in Strasbourg within the Science beyond Fiction exhibition, 20-21 April 2010, organised to introduce Members of the European Parliament to Future and Emerging Technologies (FET). E. Charbon [and J. Arlt] attended and presented a 3 part poster (poster 1 - poster 2 - poster 3). 

[MEGAFRAME] Oct. 2009: MEGAFRAME reports on the performance of an array of 32x32 plano-convex 50μm pitch microlenses (see LEOS 2009), fabricated by co-polymer casting in a photoresist replica mold, which have been characterized by a specially developed Optical Test Bench. The measured detection sensitivity increase reaches up to a factor of 35. This concentration factor is, to the best of our knowledge, presently the highest reported to date for any array of SPADs.

[MEGAFRAME] Sept. 2009: S. Donati, UNIPV, has been invited to present a talk at the 17th International Conference on Advanced Laser Technologies (ALT09), 26 Sept - 1 Oct 2009, Antalya, Turkey, and selected the MEGAFRAME project as a topic.

[MEGAFRAME] June-Sept. 2009: MEGAFRAME reports on the design and characterisation of 32x32 TDC/TAC plus single photon avalanche diode (SPAD) pixel arrays implemented in a 130nm imaging process, to create a single chip TCSPC sensor (see the IISW, CICC and ESSDERC Publications). To the best of our knowledge, this work constitutes the largest single-chip array of fully integrated TDCs/TACs so far reported. Each TDC/TAC-SPAD ensemble measures only 50x50μm². It is thus one of the smallest ever demonstrated with deep sub-nanosecond time resolution.

[European R&D] July 2009: The European Commission has explicitly included single-photon and smart pixel based time-correlated imaging R&D into the ICT Call 5 Photonics 2009 topics (see EC Photonics unit website). This is fully in line with MEGAFRAME’s pioneering results, which proved that single photon arrays can indeed be implemented in deep sub-micron CMOS for time-correlated as well as intensity applications.

[MEGAFRAME] July 2009: MEGAFRAME reports on the a new low noise single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) fabricated in a 130 nm CMOS imaging process (SSE 2009). To the best of our knowledge, the DCR (Dark Count Rate) per unit area achieved in these devices is the lowest ever reported in deep sub-micron CMOS SPADs.

[MEGAFRAME] May 2009: MEGAFRAME reports on the real-time hardware (FPGA) implementation of a new integration based FLIM lifetime calculation algorithm, called IEM, suitable for SPAD arrays (see ISCAS 2009). This approach enables direct lifetime calculation in parallel for every pixel. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first system that can generate real-time video-rate fluorescence lifetime images.

[MEGAFRAME] April 2009: MEGAFRAME was selected as one of the exhibits of the FET09 Science beyond Fiction conference, 21-23 April 2009, Prague. E. Charbon and R. Henderson attended and presented a 3 part poster (poster 1 - poster 2 - poster 3).

[MEGAFRAME] Jan. 2009: Dr. Robert Henderson, UNIED, has been invited to present a talk at the Rank Prize mini-symposium on Single-Photon Detectors, 12-15 Jan 2009, Grasmere, Lake District, UK.

[MEGAFRAME] May 2008: MEGAFRAME reports on the direct integration for lifetime extraction method (IEM), a new, simple, and hardware-only fluorescence-lifetime-imaging microscopy (FLIM) proposed to implement on-chip lifetime extractions (JOSA A 2008).

July/Aug. 2007: MEGAFRAME reports on the first implementation of a Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) in 130 nm complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology - see also the JSTQE paper in the "Publications" section.

FBK/ITC press release, Oct. 2006 (original Italian version, English version).

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