• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.301-306
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• 2009

This paper describes the design and fabrication of 16$\times$16 microbolometer infrared focal plane arrays based on iMEMS technology. Amorphous silicon was used for infrared-sensitive material, and it showed the resistance of 18 Mohm and the temperature coefficient of resistivity of -2.4 %. The fabricated sensors exhibited responsivity of 78 kV/W and thermal time constant of 8.0 msec at a bias voltage of 0.5 V. The array performances had satisfactory uniformity less than 5 % within one-sigma. Also, 1/f noise of pixel was measured and the noise factor of $6\times10^{-11}$ was extracted. Finally, we obtained detectivity of $1.27\times10^9cmHz^{0.5}/W$ and noise equivalent temperature difference of 200 mK at a frame rate of 30 Hz.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2001.11a
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• pp.558-561
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• 2001

Vanadium oxide ($VO_{x}$) thin films are very good candidate material for uncooked infrared (IR) detectors due to their high temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) at room temperature. But, the deposition of $VO_{x}$ thin films showing good electrical properties is very difficult in micro bolometer fabrication process using sacrificial layer removal because of its low process temperature and thickness of thin films less than 1000${\AA}$. This paper presents a new fabrication process of $VO_{x}$ thin films having high TCR and low resistance. Through sandwich structure of $VO_{x}$(100${\AA}$)/V(80${\AA}$)/$VO_{x}$(500${\AA}$) by sputter method and post-annealing at oxygen ambient, we have achieved high TCR more than -2%/$^{\circ}C$ and low resistance less than $10K\Omega$ at room temperature.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.299-312
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• 2006

This paper presents the results of a novel test structure for process control monitor for uncooled IR detector technology of microbolometer arrays. The proposed test structure is based on resistive network configuration. The theoretical model for resistance of this network has been developed using 'Compensation' and 'Superposition' network theorems. The theoretical results of proposed resistive network have been verified by wired hardware testing as well as using an actual 16x16 networked bolometer array. The proposed structure uses simple two-level metal process and is easy to integrate with standard CMOS process line. The proposed structure can imitate the performance of actual fabricated version of area array closely and it uses only 32 pins instead of 512 using conventional method for a $16{\times}16$ array. Further, it has been demonstrated that the defective or faulty elements can be identified vividly using extraction matrix, whose values are quite similar(within the error of 0.1%), which verifies the algorithm in small variation case(${\sim}1%$ variation). For example, an element, intentionally damaged electrically, has been shown to have the difference magnitude much higher than rest of the elements(1.45 a.u. as compared to ${\sim}$ 0.25 a.u. of others), confirming that it is defective. Further, for the devices having non-uniformity ${\leq}$ 10%, both the actual non-uniformity and faults are predicted well. Finally, using our analysis, we have been able to grade(pass or fail) 60 actual devices based on quantitative estimation of non-uniformity ranging from ＜ 5% to ＞ 20%. Additionally, we have been able to identify the number of bad elements ranging from 0 to ＞ 15 in above devices.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.26 no.8
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• pp.624-628
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• 2013

With the recent development of less-costly uncooled detector technology, expensive optics are among the remaining significant cost drivers in the thermography camera. As a potential solution to this problem, the fabrication of IR lenses using chalcogenide glass has been studied in recent years. We report on the molding and evaluation of a ultra-precision chalcogenide-glass lens for the thermography camera for body-temperature monitoring. In addition, we fabricated prototype thermography camera using the chalcogenide-glass lens and obtained the thermal image from the camera. In this work, it was found out that thermography camera discerned body-temperature between 20 and $50^{\circ}C$ through the analysis of thermal image. It is confirmed that thermography camera using the chalcogenide-glass lens is applicable to the body-temperature monitoring system.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.175-175
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• 2011

인체감지 적외선 센서로 사용되는 마이크로볼로미터 센서 감지재료인 $V_{2-x}W_xO_5$를 증착하고 단위소자를 제작하여 저항 및 센서성능을 측정 조사하였다. 감지재료는 $V_2O_5$에 W을 첨가하여 $V_{2-n}W_nO_5$ 타겟을 제작하였으며 RF sputtering 장비를 이용하여 $V_{1.85}W_{0.15}O_5$ 박막을 증착하였다. 증착온도 $400^{\circ}C$, $Ar/O_2$ 가스비율 50/20, 두께 200nm로 증착된 센서 재료의 특성을 조사한 결과 저항은 약 $20{\sim}70k{\Omega}$이었으며, TCR 값은 -3%/$^{\circ}C$ 이상으로 매우 우수한 박막특성을 얻었다. 볼로미터소자는 $40{\times}40{\sim}140{\times}140um^2$의 셀면적으로 설계하여 전극패턴과 습식식각공정으로 센서 구조체를 제작하였다. 소자의 성능평가는 검출기 측정장비를 이용하여 반응도 및 탐지도 특성을 조사하였다.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.19-23
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• 2012

We report microbolometer characteristic with n-type and p-type amorphous silicon thin film. The n-type and p-type amorphous silicon thin films were made by PECVD. The electrical properties of n-type and p-type a-Si:H thin films were investigated as a function of doping gas flow rate. The doping gas used $B_2H_6/Ar$ (1:9) and $PH_3/Ar$ (1:9). In general, the conductivity of doping a-Si:H thin films increased as doping gas increase but the conductivity of a-Si:H thin films decreased as the doping gas increase because doping gas concentration increase led to dilution gas (Ar) increase as the same time. We fabricated an amorphous silicon microbolometer using surface micromachining technology. The fabricated microbolometer had a negative TCR of 2.3%. The p-type microbolometer had responsivity of $5{\times}10^4V/W$ and high detectivity of $3{\times}10^8cm(Hz)^{1/2}/W$. The p-type microbolometer had more detectivity than n-type for less noise value.