The final technology will add polarimetric capability to imaging cameras in the NUV/optical, providing simultaneous measurements of the different polarization states of the light. This will be obtained by the development of an innovative coating based on nanostructured emissive materials sensitive to the polarization of the incident light. A double layer film of two organic systems will be coupled to image detectors so that the two polarization components of the incoming light are converted into two different colors.
Imaging polarimeters are commercially available, but, other than being generally expensive, complex and/or with moving parts, often they provide measurements of the components of the polarized light sampled at different points of time and/or space, thus introducing artefacts difficult to eliminate, especially when the subjects are moving. We propose a very compact (on-chip) architecture, but with the possibility, in principle, of measuring simultaneously two orthogonal component (0° and 90°, or 45° and 135° in case of liner polarization; left or right in case of circular polarization) without splitting the incoming light in two parts (thus gaining in efficiency) and sampling the image at the same spatial coordinates. This is possible depositing the organic nanostructured film on an imaging detector intrinsically sensitive to colours. The materials can be tailored to cover a wide range of wavelengths (300-1000nm) and to be sensitive to linear or circular polarization.