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AssigneeCalifornia Institute of Technology
InventorsThomas W. Kenny, William J. Kaiser, Judith A. Podosek, Erika C. Vote, Richard E. Muller, Paul D. Maker
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An uncooled infrared tunneling sensor in which the only moving part is a diaphragm which is deflected into contact with a micromachined silicon tip electrode prepared by a novel lithographic process. Similarly prepared deflection electrodes employ electrostatic force to control the deflection of a silicon nitride, flat diaphragm membrane. The diaphragm exhibits a high resonant frequency which reduces the sensor's sensitivity to vibration. A high bandwidth feedback circuit controls the tunneling current by adjusting the deflection voltage to maintain a constant deflection of the membrane. The resulting infrared sensor can be miniaturized to pixel dimensions smaller than 100 .mu.m. An alternative embodiment is implemented using a corrugated membrane to permit large deflection without complicated clamping and high deflection voltages. The alternative embodiment also employs a pinhole aperture in a membrane to accommodate environmental temperature variation and a sealed chamber to eliminate environmental contamination of the tunneling electrodes and undesireable accoustic coupling to the sensor.
An infrared sensor comprising:
In a tunneling infrared sensor of the type having a deflectable membrane forming a wall of an enclosed gas-filled chamber and an electrode tip for establishing a tunneling current dependent upon the deflection of said membrane in response to incident infrared radiation;
An infrared sensor comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.