Antenna-coupled niobium bolometers for mm-wave imaging arrays *

S. Nolen,a J. Koch,a N. Paulter,b c. D. Reintsema,a and E. N. Grossmana

'"

aNational Institute of Standards and Technology

Boulder, Colorado 80303

~ational Institute of Standards and Technology

Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899

ABSTRACT

Antenna-coupled thin-film niobium microbolometers designed for nun-wave imaging arrays have been fabricated and their
electrical properties measured. The niobium bolometers are operated at room temperature and are located at the feeds of
half-wave dipole antennas on an electrically thick silicon substrate. We independently measured the resistance of the
microbolometers as a function of temperature and the dynamic resistance as a function of DC bias current, yielding the
electrical responsivity and thermal conductance of the bolometers. The latter is dominated by conduction through a deposited
Si02 isolation layer. We describe electrical measurements of the bolometers' pulse response and noise, performed by
illuminating the bolometers with a high power, pulsed mm-wave source. We discuss these measurements in the context of
the pulsed detection architecture planned for an active nun-wave imaging system currently under development.

Keywords: antenna-coupled bolometers, millimeter-wave

1. INTRODUCTION

Most clothing and many common building materials are transmissive to electromagnetic radiation at millimeter wavelengths. 1
This has motivated the development of nun-wave imaging systems for detection of concealed weapons. However, many of
the systems under development are based on coherent receiver technology, which introduces a high level of complexity, and
therefore higher cost, greater size and weight, and poorer reliability compared to incoherent detection systems, particularly
for systems with high pixel counts.2 Furthermore, most active imaging systems use continuous wave (CW) sources that
introduce standing waves (interference) and glare (dynamic range) problems. Some work has been done on mm-wave
imaging systems that use room-temperature antenna-coupled microbolometers as detectors instead of coherent receivers.3
One major advantage of room-temperature antenna-coupled bolometers is their simplicity. A typical bolometer consists of an
absorber thermally connected to a thermometer. The absorber converts the incident radiation to heat, and the thermometer
measures the temperature change. For efficient absorption, the effective absorber area of the detector must be at least ..:e,
where ..:tis the wavelength of the radiation incident on the detector. For mm-wave radiation, the detector would need a large
absorber which would in turn result in slow device response. To overcome this, we use a bolometer with an absorber area
much smaller than ..:t2,coupled to an antenna.4 The bolometer is made as small as possible for faster response and enhanced
sensitivity, and the antenna focuses incident power from a large area (on the order of ..:t2)onto the much smaller bolometer.

We are developing an active mm-wave imaging system which employs uncooled antenna-coupled bolometers as the detectors
and a novel architecture based on pulsed illumination and gated integration ("boxcar averaging") of the detected signal. We
have constructed a single-channel test system to electrically emulate this pulsed detection architecture and measured the
performance of embedded, simple, dipole-coupled bolometers.

Many of the purely detector-related issues for a mm-wave system are similar to those encountered in uncooled bolometric
imagers for thermal infrared wavelengths, which have been reviewed by Wood.s The detectors' noise spectral density, which
ultimately limits the performance for these bolometers, is composed of several uncorrelated sources that add in quadrature:

S} = S}(Johnson) + S}(phonon) + S}(amplifier) + S}(I/f) [V2/Hz], (1)

· Contribution ofD.S. Government, not subject to copyright.

Part of the SPIE Conference on Terahertz and Giaahertz Photonics - Denver. Colorado - Julv 1999
SPIE Vol.3795 - 0277-786X1991$10.00 279
 where Sv is the spectral density of voltage fluctuations at the detector output. The first term on the right side of the equation
is the contribution due to the Johnson noise, 4ksTR, where ks is the Boltzmann constant, T is the absolute temperature and R
is the electrical resistance. The second is the contribution due to the phonon noise, 4kBT2G9{2, where G is the thermal
conductance in W/K. and 9i is the responsivity in V/W. The third term is due to the amplifier noise, and the fourth term is
due to detector lifnoise. The noise equivalent power, Pne,is related to the spectral density as Pne= S)9i.

1"
In this paper, we first describe the theoretical advantage in terms of signal-to-noise ratio of a system based on pulsed
.' illumination compared to one based on modulated continuous wave (CW) illumination. Then we briefly describe the
-/
II fabrication, DC electrical, and thermal properties of the bolometers we use to implement the pulsed detection architecture.
Similar bolometers have been described previously.6 Finally, we describe the single-channel system we have built to test the
pulsed detection architecture and the pulse response and noise properties of the anteIU1a-coupledbolometers, as measured
with this system.

2. PULSED VERSUS CW ILLUMINATION AND DETECTION

There are two system architectures to consider: one using a chopped CW source with synchronous detection and a second
using a pulsed source with gated integration. Source power is limited by thermal burnout for practical (i.e., solid-state)
mm-wave sources; so in comparing the two systems, we assume the two sources have the same average power. The optical
configuration, including target reflectance, is also the same for both architectures. Therefore, the average power, Pave,
coupled into each detector is the same. The signal (referred to the detector input) will then be Pavefor the system with the CW
source and PavdD (where D < I is the duty cycle) for the pulsed system. Assuming the Pne's for the two systems are the
same, then the noise for the first system is (Pne2/2T)In.,where T is the total integration time. In the second system, the noise is
(Pn//27:pulsJ{)ll2,where 'lpulseis the pulse width and N is the number of pulses in the integration time. This can be expressed
in terms of the duty cycle as (Pne2/2TlJ)112.Thus, the signal-to-noise ratio of the system with a pulsed source and gated
integration is better than that of the system with a CW source by a factor ofW. This improvement in the signal-to-noise
ratio has not previously been exploited in mm-wave imaging systems and depends on the existence of pulsed sources of high
peak power. The pulsed source we used for this work is based on formerly classified Soviet military technology that has only
recently become available. The applicable duty cycle for this source is approximately 0.01, implying a factor of 10
improvement in sensitivity over a CW system, or a factor of 100 improvement in time to acquire an image of a given
sensitivity.
I,
I
i. 3. DEVICE FABRICATION
,
t
The room-temperature microbolometers consist of thin, sputtered, niobium films. These niobium bolometers lie at the feeds
I of evaporated gold half-wave dipole anteIU1as. The dipole width is 5 ~m, and the length is 540 ~m. This length corresponds
to the halfwave resonance for an antenna on a semi-infinite substrate7 of dielectric constant e= 12, at a free-space
I! wavelength of 3 mm. The niobium bolometers are patterned by plasma etching, and the gold antennas are patterned by lift-
off. The antenna-coupled bolometers are fabricated on electrically thick silicon substrates onto which a 230 run thick Si02
thermal-isolation layer has been deposited.

The device fabrication is done in three steps. First, 30 run of niobium is deposited and patterned. Then, a cleaning step is
performed to remove the oxide film that develops on the niobium when it is exposed to oxygen in air or water.6 The wafer is
sputter-cleaned by introducing argon into the chamber and igniting an rfplasma. Previous work on these bolometers has
determined that this cleaning step is crucia1.6 Without breaking vacuum after the cleaning step, 200 run of gold is deposited.
Finally, the gold is patterned for the antennas. In addition to the antenna-coupled bolometers, we have also fabricated
bolometer test structures of various areas, as well as Van der Pauw structures of various areas for measurement of interlayer
contact resistance. Examples of the antenna-coupled bolometers and the test structures are seen in Fig. 1. All of the antenna-
coupled bolometers had nominal dimensions of 6 ~m x 2 ~m.

t.
t
280
 ~

Au

Nb II I+ lIT-
I...."''''XXXXXXXX>a
Si02
Au II I

(X)c

77/)5U"</ /, I V+ I1II V- I

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 1. Examples of the test structures: (a) 6 Jlm x 2 Jlm bolometer at the feed ofa dipole antenna, (b) schematic cross-section of the Nb
bolometer, (c) 6 Jlm x 2 Jlm bolometer test structure.

4. ELECTRICAL MEASUREMENTS

We directly measured the resistance of the devices as a function of temperature, R(T), in a variable temperature "pyrostat."
R(T) was dominated by a linear dependence (see Fig. 2) as expected for a nonnal metal film at room temperature. However,
the temperaturecoefficientof resistance,TCR = ~ dR , was slightly lower than would be expected for a nonnal metal;
RdT
typically TCR was observed to be about 0.002 K-1at room temperature rather than the expected TCR liT = 0.0033K-1. -
This, together with the existence of a small higher-order dependence in R(T) at the higher temperatures, suggested that even
at room temperature, the residual resistance (R extrapolated to T= 0) of the 30 nm thick film was a non-negligible fraction of
the ordinary, phonon-scattering induced resistance. The functional dependence of R(T) was only slightly different for the
antenna-coupled bolometers than for the test structures of the same size.

120 , ~
i-
6 3 J..Imx 1 J..Imtest structure
110 f-

100
t
~
..
o
'f"
6 J..Imx 2 J..Im test structure
24 J..Imx 8 J..Imtest structure
48 J..Imx 16 J..Imtest structure
6 J..Imx 2 J..Imantenna-coupled
bolometer
....

66

6 6 6 6. 6.

-9- 90 F-

. 66666666666666666.......
. .. -
80:'"
a: ..........
70 ~ _.~

.....~oci9 -'
60 ~ of"'\OOV'f"'f"

50 :.
!- ¥¥¥¥9~¥99¥99V99~.~~~ j
40 [ L... J . . I . 1
260 280 300 320 340 360 380 400
T (K)
Fig. 2. Typical R(T) curves for a 6 Jlm X 2 Jlm antenna-coupled bolometer and test structures of various sizes.

I I~~,
~ 281

I I

~
 The electricalresponsivity,91= f3/bias,(where 13= ~GdTdR) of the devices was found by measuring the differential resistanc"f,
dV/dI,as a functionof DC bias current.The datawere fit to the form

dV _ R (1 +
0 13 I 2)
(2)
di - (1- f3/2)2 '

which corresponds to resistance changes due solely to bias-induced self-heating6 (see Fig. 3). At high bias, in all of the
6 ~m x 2 ~m and 3 ~m x I ~m devices, the differential resistance, dV/dI, reached a maximum and began to decrease (see
Fig. 3 inset). We attribute the difference between the fit and the data at high bias to an additional component of resistance
change due to nonlinear contact resistance at the gold-niobium interface. The values of specific contact resistance measure
on the Van der Pauw structures, typically 0.15 Q~m2, were consistent with this explanation. With the independent
measurement of R(T), illustrated in Fig. 2, we were able to determine the thermal conductance of the antenna-coupled
bolometers more accurately than in previous work,6 where TCR 1/Twas assumed. -
A parasitic resistance was present in the antenna-coupled bolometers which was not present in the test structures, due to th
longer leads on the antenna-coupled bolometers. (These leads were situated between the bolometer and the voltage termin ls
for four-terminal resistance measurements.) Therefore, the measured zero-bias resistance of the antenna-coupled bolomet s
~
was about 35 11higher than that of identically sized test structures. Before fitting to find 13,the resistance measurements f4r
the antenna-coupled bolometers were corrected for this parasitic resistance by subtracting a constant 32.2 Q (the mean
~~ difference from several devices) from the measured values. The thermal conductance was calculated using the 13found wi
the corrected resistance. The thermal conductance for an antenna-coupled bolometer of area 6 J.l.mx 2 Jlm was about
1.1 x 1O~ W/K. Calculated values of G for the antenna-coupled bolometers, as well as for the bolometer test structures of
various sizes, are summarized in Table 1. The scaling of G with area is seen in Fig. 4. G scaled more closely with area th
with linear dimension, implying that it was dominated by planar conduction through the Si02 as opposed to thennal
spreading resistance through a hemispherical volume as described by Hwang et a1.4 There did not appear to be a large
difference in G between antenna-coupled bolometers and test structures of the same area. Any such difference was withinlthe
,., scatter among individual devices (after correction for parasitic resistance). This scatter was as much as 50 percent.
'i
100

10
§:
1
§: 0 2 3
I (mA)
4
.
s.
0
0
0

D
1 D
>
"0

o T
S · o
D
y y y
YYT
>
"0 I Q tt'
2pi

I I I I
P :
0.01
-1 0 1 2 3 4
I (mA)

Fig. 3. Typical curves of differential resistance, dVIdI, versus bias current for test structures of various sizes. The uncertainty in dVldlts
30 mn. The zero bias values of dVIdI are as follows: for the 3 Jim x 1 Jim test structure, dV/dI(0)=85.0 n; for the 6 Jim x 2 Jim test
structure, dV/dl(0)=54.5 n; and for the 24 Jim x 8 Jim test structure, dV/dl(0)=49.0 n. Shown in the inset is a dV1d1 versus bias curre
curve for a 6 Jim x 2 Jim antenna-coupled bolometer which has been corrected for the parasitic resistance in the leads. The solid line is the
fit used to determineft, which in this case was 1.89 V/W'mA.

282
 Table 1. Calculated thennal conductance of measured antenna-coupled bolometers and
bolometer test structures of various areas. The first two columns are the measured
bolometer resistance at zero bias and the responsivity at 1.0 mA. The third column is the
calculated value of the thennal conductance, and the fourth column is the bolometer area.

Ro(Q) 9\..0 (VfW) G (WIK) Area (m2) :r

test structures
device 1 85.0 6.49 1.54 x 10-5 3x 1
device 2 65.2 3.28 1.43 x 10-5

device 3 54.5 1.76 5.04 x 10-5 6x2

device 4 49.0 1.32 7. 14 x 10-5

device 5 51.4 0.185 4.70 x 10-4 24 x 8

device 6 47.2 0.183 4.43 x 10-4
antenna-
coupled
bolometers
device 7 98.0 1.27" 1.41 x 10-4" 6x2
device 8 83.9 1.89" 8.90 x 10-5"
device 9 80.2 1.53" 1.07 x 10-4"
..
9\ and G for the antenna-coupled bolometers have been corrected for the parasitic
resistance in the leads.

10-3
. test structures
o antenna-coupledbolometers
.

o
-
Q'
o
~ 10-4
.
o
<9
.
,
I'i

.
..

.I
,:1
..~
10-5
1 10 100 1000
Area (~m2) 'j
~

Fig. 4. Thennal conductance versus bolometer area. G for the antenna-coupled bolometers has been corrected for the parasitic resistance ,~,
in the leads.
:
~i

i
=1
:i
:1
283
l

;:

I
t~ I
 5. PULSE RESPONSE AND NOISE MEASUREMENTS

To measure the bolometers' pulse response and noise, the antenna-coupled bolometers were illuminated with a pulsed 100
GHz noise source through a polyethylene focusing lens, a hyperhemispherical silicon substrate lens, and the backside of the
silicon substrate onto which the detectors were deposited (see Fig. 5). The source used high-power IMPAIT oscillators. It
had a peak power of I Wand a pulse width of 100 ns, measured from the 3 dB points of the internally generated trigger
pulse. The repetition rate was programmable from 10Hz to 100 kHz. This repetition rate detennined the duty cycle, which
figures prominently in signal-to-noise perfonnance as discussed in the introduction. The source was integrated with an
isolator and a conical horn, and the output beam had a 3 dB half-width of 3.5 degrees.

polyethylene detector
focusing focal
lens plane

100 GH
pulsed
source
o
I.IL
/
hyperhemispherical
silicon substrate lens
trigger

computer
and
~
t disola
t

Fig. 5. Block diagram of experimental set-up.

The detector was current biased, typically at a level of about 1 mA, and the detector voltage was amplified and filtered in a
low-noise commercial preamplifier. Using this set-up, we detected pulses and recorded the pulse shape on a digital
oscilloscope (Fig. 6). We observed a pulse-to-pulse variation of the source power, where the distribution of pulse heights
was roughly Gaussian and its distribution exhibited a full width at half maximum (FWHM) of about 18%. The pulse shape
remained roughly constant. The data after the pulse had turned off, between the points at 90% and 10% of the maximum
amplitude, were fit to a single exponential fonn, exp(tI'X'IO-90),
as seen in the inset of Fig. 6. The average best-fit value for
"" several antenna-coupled bolometers was 'l'10-90=155 ns:i: 20 ns.
k

284

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,
r
, 0.007
,..
,
!
...
0.006
..
.....
0.004

~ 0.003
0.005
.... Q)
en

... ...
$ 0.002
(5
>
0.004 0.001

. ..
Q)
0>
~oo 450 500 550 600 650 700 75
;g 0.003
(5 Time (ns)
>
0.002

0.001

-0.001
-1 0
il 2 3 4 5
i
f
j,
.Ii
Time (~s) I.
i'Ii
,1
Fig. 6. Bolometer response to the pulsed 100 GHz source. Shown in the inset is the fit used to extract the detector response time. j

For the time-domain noise measurements, the detector signal was amplified and then sent to a commercial gated integrator.
The amplifier had a high-pass filter with a 1 kHz cutoff frequency. The inclusion of this filter provided a very important
advantage to a pulsed system that a CW system would lack, namely rejection of detector's 1/f noise. The filter's cutoff
frequency was chosen to lie well below the pulse-repetition rate and above the detector 1/f noise knee, which was typically
about 1 kHz for these detectors.6 In this case, a negligible fraction of the signal bandwidth was filtered out (this was centered
at the repetition rate and its hannonics), but a potentially large fraction of the noise was removed. The gated integrator
allowed us to adjust the gate width, 'l'gate,gate delay, and the number of pulses averaged. The signal from each pulse
measured at the boxcar was the mean voltage at the input within the time 'l'gate.

A computer-controlled data-acquisition system collected the data. The gated integrator had two channels so two different
detectors could be measured at the same time. A measurement consisted of a large number of acquisitions, where each
acquisition consisted of N pulses exponentially averaged by the gated integrator. The total integration time for each
acquisitionwas thus 'ftO! = N'l'gate.The computercollectedthe data and performedstatisticson each measurementset. We
extracted the noise from the statistics, using the classical variance, (52. We typically measured ~ of the system, referred to
the detector output, to be 1.5 x 10-14y2, with 'l'tot= 750 ~s. This corresponds to a noise spectral density of4.7 nYI'fj;h
(referred to the detector output), which is dominated by the preamp noise. The detector noise of these bolometers was
characterized before,6 and above the l/fknee (- 1 kHz) it was dominated by Johnson noise of approximately 1.0 nYI'fj;h.

A significant practical disadvantage of the pulsed system architecture compared to a CW system is its susceptibility to
electromagnetic interference (EMI). Gated integration effectively provides a signal and noise bandpass, consisting of a comb,
centered at the repetition rate, and its hannonics, and extending up to a frequency of approximately f mu. ='f;~,e' which is
possibly as high as several MHz. Any EMI at hannonics of the pulsed source's repetition rate will add to the measured noise.
Practical implementations of the pulsed system architecture will therefore require careful attention to shielding, grounding,
and packaging issues that affect EMI immunity. For our laboratory demonstrations, we were able to eliminate the external
sources of EMI well enough to avoid corrupting our pulsed time-domain measurements. We also measured the system's
noise spectral density in the frequency domain, Sv. The variance in the time domain should be related to the noise spectral
density as (52= 51/2/2'l'tot>where 'ftotis the total integration time, N'l'gate.Once the EMI was reduced, the time-domain and
frequency-domain noise measurements were consistent with each other.

:.1
I.~!
285
 The pulse-to-pulse variation of the source was also seen in time-domain noise measurements. With the source blocked, the
noise of the biased detector plus the system was about 4.7 nVr./'H;;. With the source on, however, this noise increased to
about 55 nVNfu.. With the source attenuated, the noise was correspondingly lower. Thus, when illuminated under
sufficiently high power, the noise was dominated by the pulse-to-pulse fluctuations in the source, not by the detector noise.
This problem can be averted, however, by taking the ratio of each detector's response in an array to that of a single reference
detector. In this way, the source variations can be removed from images formed by a detector array. We tested this
normalization procedure on a single detector pair (one signal and one reference detector) and found the noise in the
normalized signal detector to be comparable to the noise of a single biased detector without illumination.

CONCLUSIONS

Antenna-coupled niobium bolometers, designed specifically for mm-wave imaging, were fabricated, and their electrical
properties were measured. The thermal conductance of these detectors was found to be about 1.1 x 10-4W/K and was
dominated by conduction through a deposited Si02 isolation layer. The detectors were employed in a system that uses a
pulsed source and gated integration to exploit the improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio over that of a system using a CW
source with the same average power and synchronous detection. Using the pulsed 100 GHz noise source, we measured the
detector's pulse response and noise. The detectors had a response time of about 155 ns. There were pulse-to-pulse
fluctuations in the source which we were able to detect and normalize out by taking the ratio of the detector response to that
of a reference detector. Finally, we were able to conclude that the time-domain noise measurements were consistent with the
frequency-domain noise measurements, and the noise of the system was dominated by the noise of the amplifier.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We gratefully acknowledge support for this program from the National Institute of Justice through NIST's Office of Law
Enforcement Standards.

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~-
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tl~.
f
oft
"
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I
rf. 5 R. A. Wood, "Monolithic silicon microbolometer arrays," in Uncoo/ed Infrared Imaging Arrays and Systems," edited by
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286