Fabrication and evaluation of a freestanding pyroelectric detector made from single-crystal LiNbO3 film

We have packaged a rectangular 3 mm x 4 mm, 10-mum-thick Z-cut lithium niobate (LiNbO3) film produced by crystal ion slicing (CIS) and evaluated its performance as a pyroelectric optical detector. We justify the difficulty of preparing the film by showing that the freestanding detector has much greater sensitivity than the same detector bonded to a substrate. We compare the sensitivity of three CIS-film detectors with that of a detector based on a 230-mum-thick LiNbO3 plate and describe the detectors' spatial uniformity and noise-equivalent power. OCIS codes: 040.0040, 160.1890, 160.2260, 160.3730.