An IR sensor with the lead-titanate (PbTiO₃) thin-film and thermal isolation improvement structure using the technology of micro-opto-mechanical system has been designed, fabricated and developed. In this paper, both numerical analysis of the static operation mechanisms such as the effects of IR light power on the depletion layer width and voltage drop across the thin PbTiO₃ film, and the dynamic responses of a thin-film pyroelectric sensor to sinusoidal modulated radiation are reported and compared to the experimental results. The fitting is quite well. The major IR-sensing par ton the cantilever beam of the developed sensor consists of a 50-nm PbTiO₃ layer deposited by RF sputtering, and a gold layer evaporated as an IR radiation absorber. With active cantilever dimensions of 200 X 100 X 5 micrometers ³ formed by etching processes, the cantilever structure exhibits a much superior performances to that of a traditional IR-sensing bulk structure under the 800-(mu) W incident optical light with wavelength of 970 nm.

Date Published: 11 November 1999
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 3897, Advanced Photonic Sensors and Applications, (11 November 1999); doi: 10.1117/12.369329

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3897:
Advanced Photonic Sensors and Applications
Robert A. Lieberman; Anand Krishna Asundi; Hiroshi Asanuma, Editor(s)