A high sensitivity lead-titanate (PbTiO3) pyroelectric thin-film infrared sensor with temperature isolation improvement structure

An infrared (IR) sensor with the lead-titanate (PbTiO3) thin-film using the technology of micro-electromechanical systems to achieve a better thermal isolation structure has been fabricated and developed. The major ER-sensing part on the cantilever beam with dimensions of 200 x 100 x 2 mu m(3) consists of a 500-Angstrom PbTiO3 layer deposited by RF sputtering, and an evaporated bismuth (Bi) layer. This thermal isolation improved structure exhibits a much superior performance to that of a traditional IR-sensing bulk structure on the experimental results, which show a 200% and 300% improvement in current gain under the incident optical power 500 mu W and 6 V applied bias at room temperature and 77 K, respectively.