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

Vanadium oxide ($VO_x$) thin films are very good candidate material for uncooled 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.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.349-353
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• 2016

Recently, research on bolometer-type uncooled infrared image sensor which is made for industrial applications has been increasing. In general, it is difficult to calibrate fixed pattern noise (FPN) of bolometer array. In this paper, average-current calibration algorithm is presented for reducing bolometer resistance offset. A resistor which is produced by standard CMOS process, on the average, has a deviation. We compensate for deviation of each resistor using average-current calibration algorithm. The proposed algorithm has been implemented by a chip which is consisted of a bolometer pixel array, average current generators, current-to-voltage converters (IVCs), a digital-to-analog converter (DAC), and analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). These bolometer-resistor array and readout circuit were designed and manufactured by $0.35{\mu}m$ standard CMOS process.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.148-149
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• 2008

As infrared light is radiated, the CMOS Readout IC (ROIC) for the microbolometer type infrared sensor detects voltage or current when the resistance value in the bolometer sensor varies. One of the serious problems in designing the ROIC is that resistances in the bolometer and reference resistor have process variation. This means that each pixel does not have the same resistance, causing serious fixed pattern noise problems in sensor operations. In this paper, Reference resistor compensation technique was proposed. This technique is to compensate the reference resistance considering the process variation, and it has the same reference resistance value as a bolometer cell resistance by using a comparator and a cross coupled latch.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.207-207
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• 2003

Uncooled infrared(IR) detectors that use a microbolometer with a large focal-plane array(FPA) have been developed with surface micromachining technology. There are many materials for microbolometers, such as metals, vanadium oxide, semiconductors and superconductors. Among theses, vanadium oxide is a promising material for uncooled microbolometers due to it high temperature coefficient of resistance(TCR) at room temperature. It is, however, is very difficult to deposit vanadium oxide thin films having a high TCR and low resistance because of the process limits in microbolometer fabrication. In general, vanadium oxides have been applied to microbolometer in mixed phases formed by ion beam deposition methods at low temperature with TCR in the range from -1.5 to -2.0%K.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.367-374
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• 2016

This paper presents an electro-thermal modeling of an amorphous silicon (a-Si) uncooled microbolometer. This modeling provides a comprehensive solution for simulating the electro-thermal characteristics of the fabricated microbolometer and enables electro-thermal co-simulation between MEMS and CMOS integrated circuits. To validate this model, three types of uncooled microbolometers were fabricated using a post-CMOS surface micromachining process. The simulation results show a maximum discrepancy of 2.6% relative to the experimental results.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2003.03a
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• pp.131-131
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• 2003

Surface micromachined uncooled IR detector with the optimized VOx bolometric layer was fabricated based on sandwich structure of the V$_2$O$_{5}$V/V$_2$O$_{5}$. In order to improve the detectivity of the IR detector, we optimized a few factors in the viewpoint of bolometric material. Vanadium oxide thin film is a promising material for uncooled microbolometers due to its high temperature coefficient of resistance at room temperature. It is, however, very difficult to deposit vanadium oxide thin films having high temperature coefficient of resistance and low resistance because of process limits in microbolometer fabrication. In order to increase the responsivity and decrease noise, we increase TCR of bolometric material and decrease room temperature resistance based on the sandwich structure of the V$_2$O$_{5}$V/V$_2$O$_{5}$ by conventional sputter. By oxygen diffusion through low temperature annealing of V$_2$O$_{5}$V/V$_2$O$_{5}$ in oxygen ambient, various mixed phase vanadium oxide was formed and we obtained TCR in range of-1.2 ~-2.6%/$^{\circ}C$ at room temperature resistance of 5~100k$\Omega$.mega$.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.5-12
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• 2000

Uncooled metallic thin-film thermopile infrared detectors have been fabricated, and the figures of merit for the detectors were examined. The hot junctions of a thermopile were prepared on a $Si_{3}N_{4}/SiO_{2}/Si_{3}N_{4}$-membrane which acts as a thermal isolation layer, the cold junctions on the membrane supported with the silicon rim which functions as a heat sink, and Au-black was used as an infrared absorber. Infrared absorbance of Au-black, which strongly depends on the chamber pressure during Au-evaporation and its mass per area, was found to be about 90 ％ in the wavelength range from 3${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ to 14${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$. Voltage responsivity, noise equivalent power, and specific detectivity of Bi-Sb thermopile infrared detector at 5 Hz-chopping frequency were about 10.5V/W, 2.3 nW/Hz$^{1/2}$, 및 $1.9\times10^{7}$ cm.Hz$^{1/2}$/w at room temperature in air, respectively.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.229-235
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• 2001

Uncooled pyroelectric thin-film (Ba,Sr)TiO$_3$ infrared detectors thermally isolated from Si-substrate by Si$_3$N$_4$/SiO$_2$/Si$_3$N$_4$-membrane have been fabricated, and figures of merit for detectors were examined. The detector at $25^{\circ}C$ in air showed relatively high voltage responsivity of about 168.8 V/W and low specific detectivity of about 2.6$\times$10$^4$cm.Hz$^{1}$2//W at 1 Hz-chopping frequency because of very small signal-to-noise voltage ratio. It could be found that both thermal noise voltage and thermal time constant of the detector were very large by analyzing dependences of output waveforms on chopping frequency and temperature.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.7-8
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• 2009

In the presence of infrared light, a CMOS Readout IC (ROIC) for a microbolometer typed infrared sensor detects the voltage or current that is caused by the changing in resistance in the bolometer sensor. A serious problem in designing the ROIC is how the value of the bolometer and reference resistors vary because of variations in manufacturing process. Since different pixel have different, resistance values, sensor operations must contend with fixed pattern noise (FPN) problems. In this paper, we propose a novel technique to compensate for the fluctuation in reference resistance by tiling into account the process variation. By using constant current source basing and correlated double sampling, we solved FPN.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.138-144
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• 2007

This paper introduces the design techniques of an IR module using the 2-D array un-cooled type infrared detector which is applied to the individual combat weapon. Considering the size and weight of the hand carried weapon system, we used a very small-sized detector and applied an adaptive temperature control algorithm so that the operation consumed with low power can be possible. We applied the AR(Auto Regressive) filter to improve the signal-to-noise ratio in a thermal image processing step. We also applied the plateau equalization and boundary enhancement techniques to improve the visibility for human visual system.