Uncooled microbolometer detector: recent developments at ULIS

Uncooled infrared focal plane arrays are being developed for a wide range of thermal imaging applications. Fire-fighting, predictive maintenance, process control and thermography are a few of the industrial applications which could take benefit from uncooled infrared detector Therefore, to answer these markets, a 35-mu m pixel-pitch uncooled IR detector technology has been developed enabling high performance 160x120 and 384x4288 arrays production. Besides a wide-band version from uncooled 320x240\45 mu m array has been also developed in order to address process control and more precisely industrial furnaces control. The ULIS amorphous silicon technology is well adapted to manufacture low cost detector in mass production. After some brief microbolometer technological background, we present the characterization of 35 mu m pixel-pitch detector as well as the wide-band 320x240 infrared focal plane arrays with a pixel pitch of 45 mu m.