Abstract

The performance of the James Webb Space Telescope in the infrared has allowed many exciting new observations to be made. Good as they are, it turns out we are still a long way from the theoretical performance for faint object studies when we are photon limited. The award of the Nobel prize to three scientists for their work in developing quantum dot technology shows how important the work has been in so many areas. More recently however scientists have been working to use quantum dots as much more efficient photon detectors over a wide range of wavelengths. This talk will describe why this is important and where developments have got to so far. Although there is no prospect of updating the systems on the JWST , it seems highly likely that quantum dot imaging devices would be used in any future space telescope mission.