Abstract
In this letter, we present results on the microfabrication and characterization of large bimaterial microcantilever arrays and discuss their performance as focal plane arrays (FPA) for uncooled infrared (IR) imagers. The arrays were fabricated using standard microfabrication processes which involved only three photolithographic steps. We used an optical readout to simultaneously measure the deflections of all the microcantilevers in the FPA. Our theoretical evaluation showed that the implemented IR imager is characterized by the background fluctuation noise equivalent temperature difference, NETDBF, of 2.52 mK. The temperature fluctuation noise equivalent temperature difference, NETDTF, and the thermomechanical NETDTM of the imager were calculated to be 14.2 mK and 151 mK, respectively. The experimentally measured response time of the FPA was 6 ms. A unique and valuable feature of the fabricated FPAs is the scalability to high resolution formats, such as 2000�2000, without progressively growing device complexity and cost.
