AVS 49th International Symposium
    Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) Wednesday Sessions
       Session MM+NS-WeM

Paper MM+NS-WeM5
IR Imaging Using Uncooled Nanostructured Microcantilever Thermal Detectors@footnote 1@

Wednesday, November 6, 2002, 9:40 am, Room C-210

Session: Nanotechnology and Nanofabrication in NEMS
Presenter: P.G. Datskos, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and University of Tennessee
Authors: P.G. Datskos, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and University of Tennessee
S. Rajic, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
L.R. Senesac, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
J. Corbeil, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
N.V. Lavrik, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Correspondent: Click to Email
Bimaterial microcantilevers have been shown to detect infrared (IR) radiation and can operate as uncooled thermal detectors. The transduction mechanism is the bending of the bimaterial microcantilever due to thermally-induced stress. Therefore, it is important to minimize cantilever deflections caused by factors other than IR radiation (e.g. intrinsic mechanical stresses and ambient temperature fluctuations) while increasing photon absorption in the desired spectral region. In this paper we report on IR imaging using optimized microcantilever designs that are immune to ambient temperature changes and other sources of interfering mechanical stresses. In addition, we achieved increased absorption of IR photons using resonant nanostructured detector surfaces. We modeled and experimentally measured responses of such devices to IR radiation as well as to ambient temperature changes. We will present and discuss our latest results. @FootnoteText@ @footnote 1@ We like to acknowledge support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Science Foundation and DOE. This work was partially supported by the Laboratory Director's Research and Development Program of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is operated for the U.S. Department of Energy by UT-Battelle under contract DE-AC05-96OR22464.