| Silicon micromachining has been combined with integrated circuit technology to produce integrated sensors employing the pyroelectric effects in oriented zinc-oxide thin films. A number of 64 x 64-element infrared imagers with on-chip signal processing circuitry have been designed, fabricated, and tested. Surface micromachining has been used to make microstructures on which a zinc-oxide thin film is deposited using rf planar magnetron sputtering. An on-chip high-performance amplifier used in conjunction with the detector array was fabricated using NMOS technology. The fabrication of the infrared imagers is carried out in a nine-mask process with 3 ;A new approach for the integration of microsensors and integrated circuits has been investigated. The approach is called vertical integration. In this approach microsensors are fabricated directly above integrated circuits. The benefits of this approach include reduced chip areas, shortened electrical interconnection distances, and reduced parasitic losses. These features enhance the performance of the sensors and enable them to be used in applications where small-feature size is important such as in some medical applications.;A 64 x 64-element imager with on-chip signal processing/addressing circuits for infrared detection has been designed, fabricated, and tested. The ;The characteristics of the imager are suitable for use in real-time imaging applications. One application is the development of light-weight and affordable night-vision goggles. Current night-vision devices, which utilize other technologies, are expensive and cumbersome to use. Although the infrared pyroelectric imager is presented as an example of the vertical integrated microsensors, the same concept can also be applied to many other sensors such as deformable membrane pressure and force sensors. |
