Infrared thermopile detector array for the integrated microspectrometer

In this paper, design and fabrication procedure of a thermopile detector array for use in a fully integrated Infrared optical spectrometer is presented. IC-compatible MEMS technologies are used for fabrication of the spectrometer components, such as slit, flat imaging diffraction grating and detector array. The IR micro-spectrometer was designed for operation in the 1.5-3 mum wavelength range. The largest dimension of it is ~8 mm. The imaging properties of the diffraction grating result in non-uniform dispersion, which imposes special requirements on the dimensions of each single detector in the array. The result is an array of unequal elements. The final design considers technological constraints, sensitivity and cross-talk between elements. Simulations results and the final design are presented.