Quantum efficiency is a ratio of how many electrons are created from typical photon hitting a detector. For optical instruments max value is 100% and is the ult

Quantum efficiency is a ratio of how many electrons are created from typical photon hitting a detector. For optical instruments max value is 100% and is the ultimate reference - every photon gets converted into electrical signal. This is why order of magnitude improvements are not expected to happen - there are physical limits on how much signal can be generated from certain amount of light. Solar cells for generating electricity may go over 100% because high energy photons can be converted into 2 electrons but this is undesirable for optical imaging and light will pass through narrowband filters before hitting detector to filter out such photons as they would skew results. Nancy Grace Roman Telescope to be launched in 2027 is expected to have 75-95% QE for near infrared compared to 70-90% for JWST: https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/WFI_technical.html https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/WFI_technical.html Last upgrade to Hubble near-IR instrument in 2009 (WFC3) has about 75% QE: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bernard-Rauscher/publication/1801530/figure/fig10/AS:647509051465729@1531389596199/The-spectrum-of-a-typical-MPF-target-star-is-compared-to-the-quantum-efficiency-QE.png https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bernard-Rauscher/public... Is it simplified model, real life detectors have more parameters regarding noise and persistence but all produced in past 20 years are close to theoretical limits.