High-performance pyroelectric vidicon

The performance parameters of the state of the art single crystal pyroelectric vidicons (PEV), specifically the modulation transfer function versus its dependence on the electron beam discharge lag and thermal spread, will be analyzed. Standard PEVs have a high value of lag and this reduces the amount of signal readout in a field time and causes smearing of the image for moving objects. Theory and experimental evidence indicate that by the utilization of a laminar flow electron gun, and properly prepared deuterated triglycene fluoroberyllate (DTGFB) will yield nearly an order of magnitude improvement in minimum resolvable temperature (MRT) at spatial frequencies about 5 lp/mm. The loss in performance in a single crystal TGS target PEV due to thermal spread, can be greatly reduced or eliminated if the TGS is diced up and the small islands thus formed are thermally isolated from each other.