Time response analysis of a pyroelectric detector

Abstract

Abstract The pyroelectric time response of a pyroelectric detector is calculated as a function of film thickness, the volume specific heat and thermal conductivity. It is found that the thinner the pyroelectric layer is, the faster the time response is and the larger the response amplitude is, and that the thinner the absorbing layer is, the faster the time response is and the larger the response amplitude; however, the effect of the absorbing layer thickness is lower than that of the pyroelectric layer thickness. Though the thinner the pyroelectric layer is, the better the pyroelectric response is, in reality, the tunneling current (i.e., leakage current) increases with decreasing the pyroelectric layer thickness and this is forbidden in some applications. In this paper, we propose two models to analyze the thermal conduction. The fit is, quite well compared with the experimental result. Key Words: Heat conduction, three-layere-model, single-layer model