Publications Details

Microphotonic thermal detectors and imagers

Shaw, Michael S.; Rakich, Peter T.; Lentine, Anthony L.; Nielson, Gregory N.; Wright, Jeremy B.; Zortman, William A.; McCormick, Frederick B.

We present the theory of operation along with detailed device designs and initial experimental results of a new class of uncooled thermal detectors. The detectors, termed microphotonic thermal detectors, are based on the thermo-optic effect in high quality factor (Q) micrometer-scale optical resonators. Microphotonic thermal detectors do not suffer from Johnson noise, do not require metallic connections to the sensing element, do not suffer from charge trapping effects, and have responsivities orders of magnitude larger than microbolometer-based thermal detectors. For these reasons, microphotonic thermal detectors have the potential to reach thermal phonon noise limited performance. © 2009 SPIE.