Thermo-Mechanical Modeling and Experimental Validation of an Uncooled Microbolometer

This paper presents mechanical and thermal modeling of a microbolometer using finite element modeling in ANSYS. The considered design of microbolometer is modeled, fabricated and measured. The deformations on the arm structure of the microbolometer are measured and compared with the developed model. Additionally, the measurements for mechanical deformations over 8-inch wafer are used to identify the effect of the process variations on the final device. The measured deformation distribution is correlated with the varied thickness of the bottom Si
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layer of the arm structure. Finally, the ANSYS models are utilized in order to extract thermal characterization properties of the microbolometer design, namely thermal conductance and the time constant.