Development of high performance active materials for microbolometers


Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Mühendislik Fakültesi, Elektrik ve Elektronik Mühendisliği Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2011

Öğrenci: NUMAN EROĞLU

Eş Danışman: RAŞİT TURAN, TAYFUN AKIN

Özet:

This thesis reports the development of Vanadium Tungsten Oxide (VWO) film as an active detector material for uncooled infrared detectors by using the reactive DC magnetron co-sputtering method. VWO is a doped form of the Vanadium Oxide (VOx) which is known as a prominent material for uncooled infrared detectors with its high TCR, low resistivity, and low noise properties. VOx is a widely preferred material for commercialized uncooled infrared detectors along with its drawbacks. Fabrication is fairly difficult due to its unstable material properties and the need for low process temperatures for a monolithic, CMOS compatible surface micromachining process. Hence, a new material with high performance and easier fabrication is needed. This thesis is the first study at METU on the development of high-performance VWO as an active detector material for uncooled infrared detectors. Deposition studies of VWO primarily started by measuring the effects of deposition parameters upon the magnetron sputtering system. Because the high effectiveness of the tungsten doping has been obtained for the doping level below 10% according to literary information, maximum vanadium (V) deposition rate together with minimum tungsten (W) deposition rate has been initially aimed. TCR of the VWO films has been measured between -2.48 %/K and -3.31 %/K, and the variation of noise corner frequency from 0.6 kHz to 8 kHz has been observed. In addition to these results of VWO, a favorable VOx recipe which has the highest performance done at METU in terms of resistance, TCR, noise and uniformity has also attained during the studies. Structural characterization of VWO is achieved using XPS, XRD, and AFM characterization techniques. Other than the sputtering parameters, post-annealing process and oxygen plasma exposure was examined as well. A general observation of the post-annealing is that it decreases not merely the TCR but also the noise of the deposited film. A short-period oxygen plasma exposure has a constructive effect on the noise behavior. Fabricated vanadium tungsten oxide with sandwich type resistor structure shows very close but better bolometric properties when compared with the yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO), which is another material being studied in scope of other theses at METU. XPS, XRD and AFM characterization methods have been used for the structural characterization of vanadium-tungsten-oxide.