Aluminum Nitride nano-plate infrared sensor with self-sustained CMOS oscillator for nano-watts range power detection

Uncooled Infrared Detector Based on an Aluminum Nitride Piezoelectric Fishnet Metasurface

“…The thermal resistance of the device was evaluated by simulating the temperature rise of the device upon application of different levels of power on the top surface of the device (simulating different levels of IR power absorbed in the resonant body of the device). The thermal resistance of the resonant detector was extracted to be 2.3 × 10 5 K/W, which is about one order of magnitude higher than what was previously demonstrated for resonant IR detectors based on conventional AlN nano-plate resonators [19], [28], indicating the effectiveness of the introduced ultrathin fully metallic anchors with minimized cross-sectional areas in maximizing the thermal isolation of the resonant nano-plate from the heat sink. The thermal time constant of the device was estimated by simulating the transient temperature response of the AlN nano-plate to 1 nW of IR power.…”

“…Therefore, a tradeoff between these two important performance metrics needs to be generally considered for the design of the detector. Nevertheless, for a given thermal resistance (guaranteeing a satisfactory NEP) the response time of the sensor can be reduced by minimizing its thermal capacitance, which directly translates into reducing the volume of the resonant structure (for a given material stack forming the resonator) (Equation (10) and (11)) [19], [28]. Based on these considerations, a new device concept, based on the use of fully metallic tethers with minimized cross-sectional areas to support an AlN nano-plate resonant piezoelectric fishnet metasurface (Fig.…”

Spectrally selective infrared detector based on an ultra-thin piezoelectric resonant metamaterial

“…It has been demonstrated that high device responsivity can be achieved by taking advantage of the unique scaling capability of the AlN piezoelectric technology [6] to fabricate high quality factor (which guarantees low noise performance) piezoelectric resonant nano-plates that are extremely well isolated from the heat sink (R th as high as ~ 10 5 K/W) and whose resonance frequency is highly sensitive to temperature (TCF as high as -30 ppm/K) [5]. Even though these resonant structures are characterized by a large thermal resistance, the thermal time constant, τ, of these detectors is maintained below ~ms, thanks to the small thermal capacitance associated with such ultra-low volume resonant nano-plates [9].…”

MEMS Resonant Infrared Sensors

“…In particular, the efficient on-chip piezoelectric actuation and sensing of high frequency bulk acoustic modes of vibration in micro-/nano-plate structures ( Fig. 1), instead of conventional beams, have enabled the fabrication of high frequency and high power handling resonators that can be directly connected to compact and power efficient electronic readouts [9,13] (without the need of off-chip bulky piezoceramic disks for actuation and complex and power inefficient optical readouts for displacement detection), which is a crucial requirement for the implementation of miniaturized thermal imagers and IR sensing systems.…”