THERMOELECTRIC INFRARED-SENSORS IN CMOS TECHNOLOGY

We report several integrated thermoelectric infrared sensors on thin s ilicon oxide/nitride microstructures realized by industrial CMOS IC te chnology, followed by one compatible maskless anisotropic etching step . No additional material is needed to enhance infrared absorption in t he spectral region between 8 and 14 mum, since the passivation layer, as provided by the CMOS process, shows significant absorption bands. W e compare aluminium/polysilicon thermopiles with n-poly/p-poly thermop iles. Our sensors show responsivities between 12 and 72 V/W, normalize d detectivities between 1.7 x 10(7) and 2.4 x 10(7) cm square-root Hz/ W and time constants of 10-20 ms.