Wide-temperature (up to 100 °C) operation of thermostable vanadium oxide based microbolometers with Ti/MgF₂ infrared absorbing layer for long wavelength infrared (LWIR) detection

A strategy for a microbolometer operating over a wide range of temperatures up to 100 °C with low nonlinearity and without hysteresis is described, based on a thermally stable VO₂(B) film and 5-stack Ti/MgF₂ infrared (IR) absorbers. The highly crystalline VO₂(B) film formed on an amorphous SrTiO₃ layer shows a high temperature coefficient of resistivity and low resistivity without any significant changes up to 100 °C. No significant changes are observed in the two values even after keeping the film at 100 °C for over a month. This outstanding thermostability makes the microbolometers with and without the IR absorber easily capable of operating up to 100 °C. The microbolometers with the 5-stack Ti/MgF₂ IR absorber also shows increases in its responsivity by 4 times at 20 °C and by 3 times at 100 °C compared to that without IR absorber due to the increase of IR absorption. These results are achieved without significant increase in the thermal time constants even with the introduction of thermally massive IR absorber.