Metamaterial-integrated microbolometer focal plane arrays for multispectral imaging in the mid- and long-wavelength infrared

This work presents the first multispectral imager consisting of microbolometer focal plane arrays with plasmonic metamaterial absorbers and integrated readout circuitry for imaging in the mid-wavelength and long-wavelength infrared. The fabrication is carried out in a post-CMOS manufacturing process on 200 mm wafers. Fraunhofer IMS’s nanotube microbolometers with dimensions of 17 μm × 17 μm used for this purpose feature a fourfold reduction in size compared to other work employing metamaterial-integrated microbolometers. The most responsive detectors produced have a noise-equivalent temperature difference of 151±5 mK, enabling recordings at a frame rate of 30 Hz. Multispectral thermography images are provided as an application example and demonstrate successful implementation.