Experiments on Temperature Changes of Microbolometer under Blackbody Radiation and Predictions Using Thermal Modeling by COMSOL Multiphysics Simulator

In this study, we study a heat transfer model, with the surface of the microbolometer device receiving radiation from blackbody constructed using a COMSOL Multiphysics simulator. We have proposed three kinds of L-type 2-leg and 4-leg with the pixel pitch of 35 μm based on vanadium oxide absorbent membrane sandwiched with top passivated and bottom Si3N4 supporting films, respectively. Under the blackbody radiation, the surface temperature changes and distributions of these samples are simulated and analyzed in detail. The trend of change of the temperature dependent resistance of the four kinds of bolometer devices using the proposed heat transfer model is consistent with the actual results of the change of resistance of 4 samples irradiated with 325 K blackbody located in the front distance of 5 cm. In this paper, ΔT indicates the averaged differences of the top temperature on the suspended membrane and the lowest temperature on the post of legs of the microbolometers. It is shown that ΔT ≈ 17 mK is larger in nominal 2-leg microbolometer device than that of 4-leg one and of 2-leg with 2 μm × 2 μm central square hole and two 7.5 μm × 2 μm slits in suspended films. Additionally, only ΔT ≈ 5 mK with 4-leg microbolometer device under the same radiated energy of 325 K blackbody results from the larger total thermal conductance.