Latest amorphous silicon microbolometer developments at LETI-LIR

摘要

The Laboratoire Infrarouge (LIR) of the Electronics and Information Technology Laboratory (LETI) has been involved in the development of Uncooled IR technology since 1986. Along these years, more and more technology improvements have been done at LETI and ULIS for large-scale production and broad commercialisation of advanced devices.With ULIS support, LETI is still pushing forward the technology, taking advantage of the well-established user-friendly properties of amorphous silicon. These developments are primarily driven by performance enhancement and cost reduction.In this outlook, the paper will first report on the recent improvements we have brought to microbolometer FPAs with 35 μm pixels, resulting in 11 mK NETD measurements. At the same time, 25 μm pixels have been demonstrated for high performance achievement. LETI is also developing a 1024 × 720, 17 μm pitch IRFPA that aims very challenging NETD < 40 mK; the paper will give the main concerns we have focused on to achieve this result. Finally, the LETI is preparing the next generation of very low cost Uncooled IRFPA, thanks to passing on all the microbolometer technology developments to the LETI 8 inches wafer facility.