Far-infra-red microbolometers made with tellurium and bismuth

The properties of bismuth and tellurium microbolometers are presented. The Te devices are shown to have responsivities approximately 100 times that of the more conventional Bi microbolometers. The Te device impedance is, however, much larger than Bi microbolometers of comparable size. To the authors´ knowledge, the Te device has the highest responsivity yet reported for a microbolometer detector.