HISTORY

Santa Barbara Focalplane began operations in 1985 as a small entrepreneurial group serving as a merchant vendor of Indium Antimonide focal plane arrays. SBF operated independently for the next two years delivering hundreds of InSb FPAs. In 1987 SBF became a Westinghouse venture and focused on delivery of InSb FPAs within the new partnership. The merchant vendor spirit lived on through the new business arrangement and resulted in the development of our first 128x128 staring array and the first ImagIR camera in 1991. This was followed in 1992 by our first 320x256 Staring Array. Lockheed Martin purchased SBF in 1993 and allowed it to operate as a merchant vendor as well as using it as an internal resource for proposals and programs.

With Lockheed Martin's support SBF began to expand again, and over the next three years saw the introduction of a new 128x128 FPA, two new 256x256 Rolling Mode FPAs, a 512x512 FPA, two new 256x256 Windowing FPAs and a Scanning TDI Array.

Starting in 1996 a new family of Smart Windowing FPAs in 320x256 and 640x512 formats was developed setting the current world standard for these formats. A LASER Range Gating 256x256, and an Ultra High Speed 128x128 followed shortly thereafter.. In 1998 we moved to a new 43,000 square foot facility and immediately set out to significantly increase production rates to meet the needs of many programs.

SBF now routinely produces highest quality 640x512 and 320x256 FPAs, and has moved to its next generation of products to include Smart Windowing 1Kx1K and all digital FPAs with direct LVDS output of 14 bit data.