A Novel Method for Estimating the Thermal Conductance of Uncooled Microbolometer Pixels

We propose a novel thermal model for uncooled microbolometer pixels. The model simplifies a three-dimensional (3D) microbolometer structure to a slab composed of two regions, and solves the corresponding heat equation by applying an orthogonal-expansion method. The results are compared to finite element simulations and conventional thermal conductance calculation methods for different geometries. The maximum discrepancy calculated between the proposed model and the finite element model was calculated as 4%, whereas the maximum discrepancy between the conventional methods and the finite element model is 41%.