A VDF TRFE COPOLYMER ON SILICON PYROELECTRIC SENSOR - DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS AND EXPERIMENTS/

For an optimal design of a VDF/TrFE (vinylidene fluoride trifluoroethy lene) copolymer-on-silicon pyroelectric sensor, the one-dimensional di ffusion equation is solved for the pyroelectric multilayer structure. Output current and voltage of the sensor are calculated. Improvement o f the sensor can be obtained by: (a) etching the silicon substrate und er the sensor element and (b) an additional VDF/TrFE copolymer layer a s thermal isolation. Different noise sources for a pyroelectric sensor have been calculated. The dielectric noise dominates the noise source s. This conclusion has been verified by measured values.