Spherical warm shield design for infrared imaging systems

The F-number matching is the primary means to suppress stray radiation for infrared imaging systems. However, it is difficult to achieve exact F-number matching, owing to the restriction from detectors, or multiple F-number design. Hence, an additional shield is required to block the certain thermal radiation. Typical shield is called flat warm shield, which is flat and operates at room temperature. For flat warm shield, it cannot suppress stray radiation while achieving F-number matching. To overcome the restriction, a spherical reflective warm shield is required. First of all, the detailed theory of spherical warm shield design is developed on basis of the principle that stray radiation cannot directly reach the infrared focal plane array. According to the theory developed above, a polished spherical warm shield, whose radius is 18 mm, is designed to match an F/2 infrared detector with an F/4 infrared imaging system. Then, the performance and alignment errors of the designed spherical warm shield are analyzed by simulation. Finally, a contrast experiment between the designed spherical warm shield and two differently processed flat warm shields is performed in a chamber with controllable inside temperatures. The experimental results indicate that the designed spherical warm shield cannot only achieve F-number matching but suppress stray radiation sufficiently. Besides, it is demonstrated that the theory of spherical warm shield design developed in this paper is valid and can be employed by arbitrary infrared imaging systems.