Abstract
This study presents a novel sensing structure design with high thermal-resistance to enhance the responsivity of thermoelectric (TE) infrared (IR) sensor. Based on the TSMC 0.18m standard CMOS platform, the TE IR sensor was designed and implemented. Merits of the proposed design are: (1) thin and slender connecting beams are designed to increase thermal-resistance to enhance sensing signals without changing thermal-noise (Fig. 1-2), (2) CMOS layers and processes are developed to realize such suspended thin-slender connecting beams (Fig. 3). Measurement results demonstrate the proposed design significantly improved both responsivity and detectivity for 146% (Detectivity = responsivity / thermal-noise, where thermal-noise is the same for reference and proposed designs).