A CMOS-Based Thermopile Array Fabricated on a Single SiO₂ Membrane

Abstract

We present a novel thermopile-based infrared (IR) sensor array fabricated on a single CMOS dielectric membrane, comprising of poly-silicon p+ and n+ elements. Processing of the chip is simplified by fabricating the entire array on a single membrane and by using standard CMOS Al metal layers for thermopile cold junction heatsinking. On a chip area of 1.76 mm × 1.76 mm, with a membrane size of 1.2 mm × 1.2 mm, we fabricated IR sensor arrays with 8 × 8 to 100 × 100 pixels. The 8 × 8 pixel device has <2% thermal crosstalk, a responsivity of 36 V/W and enhanced optical absorption in the 8–14 µm waveband, making it particularly suitable for people presence sensing.

Keywords

• MEMS
• CMOS
• infrared
• thermopile array
• IR image sensor
• presence sensing