Abstract
This study proposes a novel terraced cavities design on the absorber of a CMOS-MEMS thermoelectric (TE) Infrared (IR) sensor for performance enhancement. Design in this study accomplishes: (1) responsivity enhancement by adding novel terraced cavities design on the IR-absorber, (2) better absorption at target wavelength 8-12 μm for human body temperature sensing, (3) sensor implementation through standard commercial CMOS platform. Absorption spectra measured by FTIR reveals terraced cavities design proposed in this study achieves absorption enhancement at target wavelength against a flat IR-absorber, and also reaches an extra 2.3% responsivity enhancement versus existing vertical cavities design.