Study of a pulsed laser deposited vanadium oxide based microbolometer array

Abstract

A 2D 10-element test microbolometer array was fabricated without an air-gap thermal isolation structure. The microbolometer uses vanadium oxide film deposited by pulsed laser deposition at room temperature as the infrared (IR) sensitive layer. The IR response of the uncooled microbolometer was evaluated in the spectral region of 8–15 μm. The detectivity and the responsivity were determined as ∼ 6 × 105 cm Hz1/2 W−1 and 36 V W−1 respectively at a 10 Hz chopper frequency with 50 μA bias current for a thermal conductance G ∼ 10−3 W K−1 between the thermal sensing layer and the substrate. The preliminary results for the test microbolometer array are discussed and compared with those for microbolometers fabricated on micromachined thermally isolated structures.