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Design and characteristics of a-Si-based micro-bolometers with shared-anchor structure in vacuum packaged systems

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Abstract

This paper reports the design and fabrication of an a-Si-based micro-bolometer using a new pixel design to enhance the fill factor through use of shared-anchor structures, which enable a one-anchor-per-unit-pixel scheme. The proposed micro-bolometer was fabricated in 64 × 64 arrays with 25 μm pixel size. The design increased the fill factor by 10 % compared to that of the unshared-anchor design owing to the mechanical flatness of the shared-anchor structure. The fabricated bolometer showed enhancements in responsivity from 1.08 × 105 to 1.23 × 105 V/W and an increased thermal time constant of 10 ms at a 30 Hz chopping frequency. From the measurement results, there were no mechanical, electrical, or thermal crosstalk problems between adjacent pixels with the increased fill factor compared to the unshared-anchor design.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Mid-career Researcher Program through NRF grant funded by the MEST (No. KOSEF 2009-0085880) and the Daedeok Technology Business Program (Announcement 2011-343) funded by MKE (Ministry of Knowledge Economy). This work was supported by the Daedeok Technology Business Program (ACC-2013-DGI-00557) funded by Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning. Also, This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (grant number: 2012R1A1A2007707).

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Correspondence to Jae Hong Park or Hee Yeoun Kim.

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H. Jung and T. H. Kim contributed equally to this paper.

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Jung, H., Kim, T.H., Kim, G. et al. Design and characteristics of a-Si-based micro-bolometers with shared-anchor structure in vacuum packaged systems. Microsyst Technol 20, 899–905 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-014-2073-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-014-2073-3

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