Triglycine sulfate (TGS) crystals for pyroelectric infrared detecting devices

Abstract

Triglycine sulfate (TGS) is one of the most comprehensively studied ferroelectric materials for infrared detecting devices. The discovery of new materials with more attractive properties together with a growing requirement for uncooled thermal detectors, having better performance than the thermistor bolometers, has resulted in considerable attention to pyroelectric devices making them the most widely studied of infrared detectors. In recent years, the study of pure and doped TGS crystals has increased because of their promise in various devices. These devices have a number of important characteristics, such as low cost, low power requirement, and a wide operating range of temperature and frequency response. Pyroelectric infrared detectors find their use in military systems, astronomical telescopes, earth observation cameras, laser beam characterization, environmental analyses monitors, medical vidicons, and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) instrumentation. The paper describes the research done at Alabama A&M University on the growth of TGS crystals for infrared detectors. Also results of infrared detectors fabricated from TGS crystals grown in space on the First International Microgravity Laboratory (IML-1) and Spacelab-3 (SL-3) are described.