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18 December 2013 Uncooled infrared detectors toward smaller pixel pitch with newly proposed pixel structure
Shigeru Tohyama, Tokuhito Sasaki, Tsutomu Endoh, Masahiko Sano, Koji Kato, Seiji Kurashina, Masaru Miyoshi, Takao Yamazaki, Munetaka Ueno, Haruyoshi Katayama, Tadashi Imai
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Optical Engineering, Vol. 52, Issue 12, 123105 (December 2013). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.52.12.123105
Abstract
An uncooled infrared (IR) focal plane array (FPA) with 23.5 μm pixel pitch has been successfully demonstrated and has found wide commercial applications in the areas of thermography, security cameras, and other applications. One of the key issues for uncooled IRFPA technology is to shrink the pixel pitch because the size of the pixel pitch determines the overall size of the FPA, which, in turn, determines the cost of the IR camera products. This paper proposes an innovative pixel structure with a diaphragm and beams placed in different levels to realize an uncooled IRFPA with smaller pixel pitch (≦17  μm ). The upper level consists of a diaphragm with VOx bolometer and IR absorber layers, while the lower level consists of the two beams, which are designed to be placed on the adjacent pixels. The test devices of this pixel design with 12, 15, and 17 μm pitch have been fabricated on the Si read-out integrated circuit (ROIC) of quarter video graphics array (QVGA) (320×240 ) with 23.5 μm pitch. Their performances are nearly equal to those of the IRFPA with 23.5 μm pitch. For example, a noise equivalent temperature difference of 12 μm pixel is 63.1 mK for F/1 optics with the thermal time constant of 14.5 ms. Then, the proposed structure is shown to be effective for the existing IRFPA with 23.5 μm pitch because of the improvements in IR sensitivity. Furthermore, the advanced pixel structure that has the beams composed of two levels are demonstrated to be realizable.
CC BY: © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.
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Shigeru Tohyama, Tokuhito Sasaki, Tsutomu Endoh, Masahiko Sano, Koji Kato, Seiji Kurashina, Masaru Miyoshi, Takao Yamazaki, Munetaka Ueno, Haruyoshi Katayama, and Tadashi Imai "Uncooled infrared detectors toward smaller pixel pitch with newly proposed pixel structure," Optical Engineering 52(12), 123105 (18 December 2013). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.52.12.123105
Published: 18 December 2013
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Cited by 8 scholarly publications and 1 patent.
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KEYWORDS
Bolometers
Readout integrated circuits
Infrared detectors
Electrodes
Thermography
Optical lithography
Thin films
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