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CMOS-Integrated Si/Sige Quantum-Well Infrared 2700111 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 21, NO. 4, JULY/AUGUST 2015 CMOS-Integrated Si/SiGe Quantum-Well Infrared Microbolometer Focal Plane Arrays Manufactured With Very Large-Scale Heterogeneous 3-D Integration Fredrik Forsberg, Adriana Lapadatu, Gjermund Kittilsland, Stian Martinsen, Niclas Roxhed, Andreas C. Fischer, Goran¨ Stemme, Fellow, IEEE,Bjorn¨ Samel, Per Ericsson, Nils Høivik, Thor Bakke, Member, IEEE, Martin Bring, Terje Kvisterøy, Audun Rør, and Frank Niklaus, Senior Member, IEEE Abstract—We demonstrate infrared focal plane arrays utiliz- I. INTRODUCTION ing monocrystalline silicon/silicon–germanium (Si/SiGe) quantum- well microbolometers that are heterogeneously integrated on top ONG-wavelength infrared (LWIR) imaging, also called of CMOS-based electronic read-out integrated circuit substrates. L thermal imaging, is quickly spreading beyond its initial The microbolometers are designed to detect light in the long wave- defense-related applications into areas as diverse as thermog- length infrared (LWIR) range from 8 to 14 μm and are arranged raphy, medical imaging, industrial process control, person de- in focal plane arrays consisting of 384 × 288 microbolometer pix- els with a pixel pitch of 25 μm × 25 μm. Focal plane arrays with tection, person counting, automotive safety and even consumer two different microbolometer designs have been implemented. The products such as mobile phones [1]–[5]. In thermal imaging, first is a conventional single-layer microbolometer design and the the electromagnetic blackbody radiation that is emitted by every second is an umbrella design in which the microbolometer legs object with a non-zero temperature is detected. The blackbody are placed underneath the microbolometer membrane to achieve radiation of objects at ambient temperature has a maximum an improved pixel fill-factor. The infrared focal plane arrays are vacuum packaged using a CMOS compatible wafer bonding and intensity at a wavelength of about 10 μm, which corresponds sealing process. The demonstrated heterogeneous 3-D integration with the atmospheric transmission window between 8 and 14 μm and packaging processes are implemented at wafer-level and enable for infrared (IR) radiation [6]. An important advantage of ther- independent optimization of the CMOS-based integrated circuits mal imaging is that the resulting images are independent of and the microbolometer materials. All manufacturing is done us- ambient light conditions and thus, enables imaging in com- ing standard semiconductor and MEMS processes, thus offering a generic approach for integrating CMOS-electronics with complex plete darkness. Thermal images are often easier to interpret miniaturized transducer elements. by automatic vision algorithms and provide information that is complementing to images taken in the visible wavelengths Index Terms—Long-wavelength infrared imaging, LWIR, ther- range [3], [7]. Furthermore, thermal imaging allows for tem- mal imaging, uncooled microbolometer, Si/SiGe quantum-wells, wafer-level vacuum packaging, very large-scale heterogeneous 3-D perature mapping and non-contact temperature measurements integration, MEMS. [8]. In a typical thermal imaging system, infrared radiation with Manuscript received April 24, 2014; revised August 2, 2014; accepted wavelengths from 8 to 14 μm is captured by an IR lens sys- September 8, 2014. Date of publication September 16, 2014; date of current tem and focused onto a sensor focal plane array (FPA) that version September 30, 2014. This work was supported by the European Com- detects the radiation. Commercially available thermal imaging mission through the EU-FP7-ICU project, EU-FP7- e-Brains project, the ESiP project by ENIAC JU, Norwegian Research Council, and the ERC Starting systems typically utilize uncooled resistive microbolometer sen- Grant M&M’s (No.277879). sor technologies for radiation detection [9]. In a microbolome- F. Forsberg, N. Roxhed, A. C. Fischer, G. Stemme, and F. Niklaus are ter, the incoming thermal radiation is absorbed in a suspended with the Department of Micro and Nanosystems, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 10044 Stockholm, Sweden (e-mail: [email protected]; and thermally isolated membrane. The absorption increases the [email protected]; andreas.fi[email protected]; [email protected]; temperature of the membrane. The temperature change of the [email protected]). membrane is detected by measuring the resulting change of A. Lapadatu, G. Kittilsland, S. Martinsen, M. Bring, T. Kvisterøy, and A. Rør are with the Sensonor AS, 3194 Horten, Norway (e-mail: adriana. the electrical resistance of the microbolometer thermistor mate- [email protected]; [email protected]; stian.martinsen@ rial that is part of the membrane. The resistance value of each sensonor.no; [email protected]; [email protected]; audun. microbolometer pixel in a focal plane array correlates with the [email protected]). B. Samel and P. Ericsson are with the ACREO Swedish ICT, SE-164 25 incoming radiation energy and registers the thermal image in- Kista, Sweden (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]). formation. Microbolometers that deliver high signal-to-noise N. Høivik is with the Department of Micro and Nano Systems, Vestfold ratios require very good thermal insulation of the membrane University College, N-3103 Tønsberg, Norway (e-mail: [email protected]). T. Bakke is with the Department of Microsystems and Nanotechnology, containing the thermistor material, large resistance changes with SINTEF ICT, Microsystems and Nanotechnology, 0314 Oslo, Norway (e-mail: temperature changes of the thermistor material, high absorption [email protected]). of the IR radiation in the microbolometer membrane and low Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. electronic noise from the thermistor material [10]–[12]. The Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSTQE.2014.2358198 microbolometer membrane is typically suspended on long legs 1077-260X © 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information. FORSBERG et al.: CMOS-INTEGRATED SI/SIGE QUANTUM-WELL INFRARED MICROBOLOMETER FOCAL PLANE ARRAYS MANUFACTURED 2700111 with a small cross-sectional area to achieve a good thermal in- sulation. In addition, microbolometer arrays are encapsulated inside a vacuum atmosphere with a gas pressure on the order of 10−2 to 10−3 mbar [12], [13]. The microbolometer ther- mistor material is likewise optimized for a high temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) while minimizing the electronic noise from the material. The vast majority of commercially available uncooled infrared focal plane arrays are based on mi- crobolometers containing vanadium oxide (VOx ) or amorphous Fig. 1. Schematic cross-section of the packaged microbolometer focal plane silicon (α-Si) thermistors, both featuring TCRs on the order of array module. 2–3%/K [14]–[19]. In both cases, the microbolometer materi- als are deposited and patterned on top of pre-fabricated CMOS focal plane arrays are implemented in a camera module to- wafers containing the read-out integrated circuits (ROIC) for the gether with LWIR optics to demonstrate the capture of LWIR detector signal read-out. This manufacturing approach is typi- video images. cally referred to as monolithic integration and is temperature limited to below 400–450 °C for the microbolometer mate- II. INFRARED MICROBOLOMETER FOCAL PLANE rial deposition to avoid damaging the CMOS electronic circuits ARRAY DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION [20], [21]. Therefore, the optimization of thermistor materials used in monolithic integration is difficult with repercussions on Fig. 1 shows a cross-sectional drawing of the packaged in- quality, uniformity and yield. Heterogeneous 3-D integration frared microbolometer focal plane array module. It includes based on wafer bonding has the potential to alleviate these fab- the heterogeneously integrated Si/SiGe quantum well mi- rication related issues of state-of-the-art microbolometer focal crobolometers on top of a CMOS-based readout integrated cir- plane arrays [22]–[24]. In heterogeneous 3-D integration, the cuit substrate and the 0-level vacuum package based on a silicon microbolometer thermistor material is fabricated on a handle- lid that is bonded to the CMOS substrate which is placed in a wafer and subsequently transferred to a prefabricated CMOS- ceramic chip carrier. The design and implementations of the based read-out integrated circuit wafer using wafer bonding, packaged microbolometer focal plane array is described in the wafer thinning and subsequent micromachining. This approach subsequent sections that provide details on the readout inte- allows for a higher temperature budget and thus a wider selec- grated circuit, the microbolometer design and integration, and tion of possible high-performance detector materials as com- the wafer-level vacuum package. pared with monolithic integration approaches. Very large-scale A. Read-Out Integrated Circuit heterogeneous 3-D integration processes for combining CMOS- electronics and micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) have The microbolometer read-out integrated circuit in this pa- been demonstrated for IC-integrated micro-mirror arrays [25]– per is implemented in a standard commercial 0.18 μmCMOS [29], IC-integrated accelerometers
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