High-performance uncooled amorphous silicon VGA and XGA IRFPA with 17μm pixel-pitch

Abstract

ABSTRACT The high level of accumulated expertise by ULIS and CE A/LETI on uncooled microbolom eters made from amorphous silicon with 45µm, 35µm and 25µm, enables ULIS to devel op VGA and XGA IRFP A formats with 17µm pixel-pitch to fulfill every applications. These detector keeps all the recent innovations developed on the 25µm pixel-pitch ROIC (detector configuration by serial link, low power consump tion and wide electrical dynami c range). The specific appeal of these units lies in the high spatial resolution it provides while keeping the small thermal time constant. The reduction of the pixel-pitch turns the TEC-less VGA array into a product well adapted for high resolution and compact systems and the XGA a product well adapted for high resolution imaging systems. High electro-optical performances have been demonstrated with NETD < 50mK. We insist on NETD and wide thermal dynamic range trade-off, and on the high characteristics uniformity, achieved thanks to the mastering of the amorphous silicon technology as well as the ROIC design. This technology node paves the way to high end products as well as low end compact smaller formats like 320 x 240 and 160 x 120 or smaller. Keywords: Uncooled microbolometer, LWIR, Amorphous silicon, IRFPA.