100-μm-Scale High-Detectivity Infrared Detector With Thermopile/Absorber Double-Deck Structure Formed in (111) Silicon

Abstract

This article presents a 96 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}\,\,\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> 106 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> sized single-crystalline silicon (SC-Si) /Au thermopile infrared (IR) detector, with the thermopile and IR absorber located at different layers of a double-deck micromechanical structure for improving detectivity. In order to enhance IR-heat absorption within such a tiny device size, an umbrella-shaped SiN IR absorbing membrane instead of traditional plane IR-absorbing film occupies the whole area of the top layer structure. The umbrella-shaped IR absorber is suspended on top of the IR-detecting thermopile layer, with a central umbrella-stick to support the suspending and conducting the absorbed IR-heat to the bottom thermopile layer. The bottom thermopile layer consists of six pairs of spiral-shaped SC-Si/Au thermocouples that feature several times higher Seebeck coefficient compared to the traditional polysilicon/metal thermocouples. By combining surface-micromachining technique with a specific bulk-micromachining process performed in (111) silicon wafer, the double-deck structured IR-detector is successfully fabricated only from the front side of a single (111) silicon wafer for IC-foundry compatible low-cost manufacturing. Testing results show that this device of about 100-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> scale achieves an ultrahigh IR detectivity of 1.01 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times \,\,10^{{8}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> cm<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\cdot $ </tex-math></inline-formula>Hz<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{{{1}/{2}}}\cdot \text{W}^{-{1}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, which is two times improvement compared to the recently reported thermopile IR detectors, though the counterparts had larger device area. Featuring tiny size and batch fabrication capability, the proposed high-performance IR-detector is promising in both single-point detection and multipixel arrayed temperature imaging applications.