Intevac
History
Varian Associates Inc. was founded in 1948. It produced vacuum tubes which could amplify electromagnetic waves at microwave frequencies, and other electromagnetic equipment.[1]
It produced image intensifier tubes for the U.S. military as part of Omni II (and possibly both earlier and later) contracts.
In 1991, the spinoff Intevac, Inc. was founded.[2]
In 2013, the U.S. awarded a contract to deliver Pilot Night Vision Sensors (PNVS) for the Apache helicopter to Intevac Photonics, using their patented EBAPS sensors.[3]
The Intevac Photonics was sold to EOTECH in December 2021.[4]
The contract to produce the Modernized Pilot Night Vision Sensor (M-PNVS) was awarded to Intevac Photonics in Octrober 2021.[5]
EBAPS
EBAPS, short for Electron Bombarded Active Pixel Sensor, is a registered trademark for a patented technology by Intevac.
EBAPS sensors are digital night vision sensors that surpass the performance of analog image intensifiers.
An EBAPS sensor consists of a GaAs photocathode combined with a CMOS Active Pixel Sensor (APS) using the Electron Bombarded Semiconductor (EBS) gain process, which requires no MCP, achieving extremely low noise.[6]
References
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varian_Associates
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intevac
- ↑ https://www.army-technology.com/news/newsintevac-supply-night-vision-cameras-us-army-apache/
- ↑ https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Intevac_Sells_Photonics_Business_to_EOTECH/a67653
- ↑ https://www.army-technology.com/news/intevac-new-order-us-army-apache-programme/
- ↑ https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/EBAPS-%C2%AE-%3A-Next-Generation%2C-Low-Power%2C-Digital-Night-Aebi-Costello/002b4258a6ebc2bca32cb725a87904ff28a11c09
