Approach to measure thermal efficiency of bolometer sensors

Evaluation of thermal efficiency is of great importance for verifying the design optimization of microbolometer-based sensors. In this work, a measurement technique has been developed to determine the thermal efficiency of a microbolometer without using structural and material parameters. The microbolometer thermal efficiency is obtained by measuring the responsivity under infrared illumination and responsivity for unity thermal efficiency using the self-heating effect. The thermal efficiency of a metal–film microbolometer sensor was determined using this technique to demonstrate its viability.