Integration of microbolometers with infrared microstrip antennas

We report on various integration schemes of infrared microbolometers with microstrip antennas. The first integration design consists of two gold (Au) rectangular microstrip patches coupled along the radiating edges by a narrow niobium (Nb) strip. Devices using silicon oxide are compared to devices using amorphous silicon as antenna substrate. An extension of the twin-patch detector design is the microstrip dipole antenna-coupled microbolometer. Two ways of connecting the device to the contact pads via narrow dc leads are presented and compared. The contribution of the dc leads to the detector response is eliminated by directly connecting the dipole to the contact pads. The thermal isolation of the microbolometer from the silicon wafer is improved by incorporating air into the antenna dielectric substrate. This leads to higher detector responsivity and shifts the resonance towards longer antennas. The implementation of a bridge microstrip dipole antenna structure is also discussed.