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Characterization of bolometers based on polycrystalline silicon germanium

alloys

Article  in  IEEE Electron Device Letters · November 1998

DOI: 10.1109/55.720191 · Source: IEEE Xplore

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376
Characterization of Bolometers Based on
Polycrystalline Silicon Germanium Alloys
S. Sedky, P. Fiorini, M. Caymax, C. Baert, L. Hermans, and R. Mertens
Abstract—In this paper, we report on the first realization and
characterization of uncooled Infra Red (IR) bolometers, based
on polycrystalline alloys of silicon and germanium (poly SiGe).
Responsivity, thermal conductance, thermal time constant and
p
noise will be analyzed. It will be shown that poly SiGe provides
high thermal insulation. An average detectivity of 108 cm Hz/W
has been measured. We expect that modifications in the devicep
structure could allow to achieve detectivities of 109 cm Hz/W.
Index Terms—Bolometers, infrared, poly SiGe, responsivity.
I. INTRODUCTION
A N infrared (IR) bolometer is formed by a tempera-
ture dependent resistor and an IR absorber. The use
of micromachining techniques allows to increase the thermal
insulation of the device, and to bring it close to the limit
imposed by radiation losses [1]. Bolometers are finding an
important application in the fabrication of uncooled focal
plane arrays (FPA’s) [2]. For the realization of bolometers,
typically a thermally and electrically insulating membrane is
fabricated and a temperature-sensitive element is deposited
onto it. Sensitive elements which can be deposited at low
temperature are vanadium oxide [3], metals [4], [5] and
amorphous semiconductors [6]. Even if good results have been
obtained with each of the above materials, none of them can
be considered the optimum. Vanadium oxide is not a standard
material in integrated circuit (IC) technology, resistivity of
metals is a slowly varying function of temperature, and amor-
phous semiconductors have a large low frequency (1/ ) noise
[7]. Research for realizing bolometers using micromachined
polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) is in progress [8] but, to
our knowledge, no final results have been published. For
this kind of bolometer the active element is self supported
(see Fig. 1). Polycrystalline silicon obviously offers complete
IC compatibility, but in order to realize mechanically stable
structures a stress free material must be used. This requires
high-temperature annealing [9], which can affect the FPA
electronics.
In this paper we report on the use of polycrystalline silicon
germanium (poly SiGe) instead of poly Si as a material for
the fabrication of self supported bolometers. This alloy has a
thermal conductivity, at least a factor of four lower than that
of poly Si [10]. Then for the same structure and the same
technological complexity, the lower thermal conductivity can
be expected to improve the performance of the device, as long
Manuscript received June 15, 1997; revised June 5, 1998.
The authors are with the IMEC, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium.
Publisher Item Identifier S 0741-3106(98)07336-4.
0741–3106/98$10.00  1998 IEEE
IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS, VOL. 19, NO. 10, OCTOBER 1998
as the thermal conductance is higher than the radiation limit.
Furthermore, it has a dependence of resistivity on temperature
comparable to that of vanadium oxide and of amorphous
semiconductors, and it can be easily micromachined [11], [12].
II. EXPERIMENT AND RESULTS
Poly SiGe bolometers are completely processed at 650 C.
The details of the process are explained in [11]. An SEM
picture of a 50 50 m device is shown in Fig. 1. The
structure is clearly suspended over the substrate, and, as the
bolometers are operated in vacuum, heat is lost only through
the supports. The active area is doped by a dose of 3
10 Boron/cm , resulting in a sheet resistance of 270 K /sq.
and a temperature coefficient of resistance of 2%/ C. In
order to reduce the resistance to about 20 K , four equally
spaced highly doped interdigitated electrodes are introduced.
In this letter responsivity, thermal conductance, thermal time
constant, and noise of the bolometer shown in Fig. 1 will be
analyzed.
To measure the responsivity, the bolometer was connected
in series to a dc source and to a load resistance , equal
to the bolometer resistance . It was then exposed to the
radiation of a black body chopped at 20 Hz, and the signal was
measured using a lock-in amplifier. The absorbed radiation
increases the temperature of the bolometer and consequently
its resistance decreases, resulting in a change of the voltage
drop across the load resistor. The responsivity is the ratio
of this voltage change to the incident IR power and can be
expressed as [13]
(1)
where is the emissivity and is the thermal conductance
of the bolometer. A responsivity of 900 V/W was measured
for a dc bias of 1.5 V.
In order to compare this value with (1), emissivity and
thermal conductance must be measured. The emissivity is
determined from the IR spectral reflectance of a large Si
substrate covered by an unpatterned absorber. In the range
of interest an average value of 0.52 was found. The thermal
conductance has been measured using the method reported
in [11], and a value of W/K has been
found. [Measurements on a similar poly Si structure gave a
thermal conductance six times larger ( W/K).]
Introducing these values of and in (1) yields a responsivity
of 975 V/W at 1.5 V, in good agreement with the measured
one.
SEDKY et al.: CHARACTERIZATION OF BOLOMETERS
Fig. 1. SEM picture of a 50 2 50 m device.

Fig. 2. ( ) Simulated thermal conductance of a 50 2
50 m device versus
the inverse length of the supports. ( ) Measured thermal conductance for the
device shown in Fig. 1. The straight line represents the thermal conductance
computed from G = gA=`.
To relate the thermal conductance of the device to the
thermal conductivity of the material and to the geometry of
the supports, we have performed a finite element analysis using
the ANSYS simulator. Simulations were done by considering
a uniform heat generation over the lowly doped part of the
bolometer, a value of W/mK was chosen, as it
fits the experimental data (square in Fig. 2). The simulated
thermal conductance is reported in Fig. 2 versus the inverse
of the length of the supports. For very short supports, it
is nearly independent of the support length, as most of the
temperature drop will occur on the structure. For supports
longer than 20 m, the thermal conductance of the device can
be approximated by (the straight line in Fig. 2),
where and are, respectively, the cross-sectional area and
the length of the supports.
The thermal time constant is given by the ratio of the
thermal capacitance to the thermal conductance. For camera
applications, it must be lower than the inverse of the frame
377
Fig. 3. ( ) Measured noise power, per unit band width, as a function of
frequency. (- - - -) Johnson noise evaluated from the value of the bolometer
resistor.
rate. From the analysis of the dependence of the signal on
the chopper frequency, we found ms. This value is
low enough to allow a decrease of the thermal conductance
by a factor of 20 thus maintaining the possibility of 30-Hz
operation.
The total noise power, per unit bandwidth, was measured
as a function of frequency (Fig. 3), at 1.5 V. The dominating
noise component is the low frequency (1/ ) noise, the power
spectrum of which is expressed as 6.62 10 V /( /Hz).
For comparison, the Johnson noise, computed from the value
of the bolometer resistance, is also reported (dotted line
in Fig. 3). A comparison of the measured (1/ ) noise with
existing literature data shows that it is definitely lower in poly
SiGe than in amorphous semiconductors [13].
Although the (1/ ) noise is large, its effect on the FPA
performance is not dramatic. As a matter of fact, assuming a
bandwidth from 10 to 10 Hz for camera operation, and inte-
grating the data of Fig. 3 we can compute the total contribution
of the (1/ ) noise, we find 13 V. The contribution of the
378
Johnson noise is of 6 V, which is a factor of 2 smaller. If we
use the above averaged value of noise to compute an average
detectivity, we find cm Hz/W. This value
can be easily improved by using thinner and longer supports.
Preliminary results show that it is possible to reduce the width
of the support down to 0.5 m. This will give higher thermal
insulation and larger responsivity, so that detectivities of about
10 cm Hz/W, in the right range for camera application, can
be reached.
III. CONCLUSION
In this work we reported on the first realization and charac-
terization of poly SiGe bolometers. Poly SiGe provides a good
thermal insulation due to its low thermal conductivity. It has
been demonstrated that a detectivity of 10 cm Hz/W can
be realized and we expect that structural modifications could
allow detectivities of 10 cm Hz/W to be achieved.
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