Focal planes of 80x60 VO_x microbolometers with pixel pitch of 104 μm were developed in support of the remote sensing of ice clouds in the spectral range from 7.9 to 50 μm. A new design that relies on the use of central posts to support the microbolometer platform was shown effective in minimizing the structural deformation usually occurred in platforms of large area. A process for goldblack coating and patterning of the focal plane arrays was established. It was found that the goldblack absorbs more than 98 % and 92 % of incident light respectively at wavelengths shorter and longer than 20 μm. Moreover, a spectral uniformity of better than 96 % was achieved in all spectral channels required for the measurements. The noise figures derived from the data acquired over short periods of acquisition time showed the evidence of a correlation with the format of the addressed sub-arrays. This correlation was not observed in the data acquired over long periods of time, suggesting the presence of low frequency effects. Regardless of the length of acquisition time, an improvement of noise level could be confirmed when the operating temperature was increased. The dependence of responsivity on sub-array format and operating temperature was investigated. The noise equivalent power derived from this study was found to be in the range from 45 to 80 pW, showing that the far infrared focal plane arrays are suited for use in the intended application.

Date Published: 27 February 2015
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 9375, MOEMS and Miniaturized Systems XIV, 93750G (27 February 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2076219

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9375:
MOEMS and Miniaturized Systems XIV
Wibool Piyawattanametha; Yong-Hwa Park, Editor(s)