UNCOOLED THERMOPILE INFRARED DETECTOR LINEAR ARRAYS WITH DETECTIVITY GREATER-THAN 10(9) CMHZ(1 2)/W/

We have fabricated 63-element linear arrays of micromachined thermopil e infrared detectors on silicon substrates. Each detector consists of a suspended silicon nitride membrane with II thermocouples of sputtere d Bi-Te and Bi-Sb-Te films, At room temperature and under vacuum these detectors exhibit response times of 99 ms, zero frequency D values o f 1.4 x 10(9) cmHz(1/2)/W and responsivity values of 1100 V/W when vie wing a 1000 K blackbody source. The only measured source of noise abov e 20 mHz is Johnson noise from the detector resistance. These results represent the best performance reported to date for an array of thermo pile detectors. A test procedure is described that measures many of th e relevant electrical, optical, and thermal properties of the detector s without specialized test structures.