VOL. 2, NO.

2, JUNE 2018 2500604

Thermal sensors

Simulation Results of Prospective Next Generation 3-D Thermopile Sensor

and Array Circuitry Options
Erik Verheyen1 , Andreas Erbslöh1 , Reinhard Viga1 , and Holger Vogt1,2
1 Department of Electronic Components and Circuits, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg 47057, Germany
2 Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems, Duisburg 47057, Germany

Manuscript received March 19, 2018; accepted April 11, 2018. Date of publication April 23, 2018; date of current version May 18, 2018.

Abstract—This article presents the simulation results and design rules of a new sensor for infrared (IR)-detection using
the thermoelectric effect. Within the Seebeck effect, thermopiles generate a voltage based on a temperature gradient
inside the structure. State-of-the-art thermopiles are manufactured as 2-D structures directly on a substrate. Here, a
possible method of 3-D integration is shown, where the thermoelectric materials are fabricated as thin tubes using an
atomic layer deposition process. These tubes are connected to an IR-absorber on top, where the IR-radiation causes a
temperature gradient relative to the substrate. This has the advantage to achieve a fill factor of nearly 100%. In comparison
to microbolometers, the 3-D thermopile is a passive structure, which does not need complex readout and supply circuits.
Furthermore, the usage of energy harvesting is possible. Additionally, new array circuitry options are discussed to achieve
a better signal-to-noise ratio. An electrical series connection of multiple sensors effects a rising specific detectivity and the
noise equivalent temperature difference decreases analogously. With this technique, the groups of pixels of the detector
can be merged to one “super-pixel” for detecting even marginal temperature changes of an object.

Index Terms—Thermal sensors, IR detection, thermoelectric, thermopiles, 3-D integration, tuneable temperature detection.

I. INTRODUCTION
Due to an emerging interest in the field of autonomous vehicles,
the infrared technology and infrared sensors are currently the subject
of intensive research activities. Therefore, there is a high demand for
cheap and high spatial resolution detector arrays. Beside the traditional
but nevertheless actual bolometer structures, thermopiles can also be
used for infrared imaging, which have some great benefits as follows.
1) Passive structure; no active sensing readout circuit is needed.
Therefore, no self-heating like in bolometers exists. Fig. 1. (a) Cross section of the post-CMOS thermopile sensor with two
different active materials A and B. (b) Example for the radial structure
2) Continuous wave sensitive; no shutter is needed. of the thermopiles with different layer thickness (green, red, blue).
3) Generate electrical power for self-supply of the readout circuit
(energy-harvesting).
The main disadvantage of commercial thermopiles compared to ble structure width in lateral direction, and the vertical dimension is
bolometers is the 2-D fabrication in the silicon substrate, which leads to limited only by the sacrificial layer process.
an immense loss of integration-space for readout circuits. To reach the This article demonstrates the principle design of the novel
performance of bolometers, 3-D structure design is mandatory. Wick 3-D thermopile and the new options for array circuitry. For exam-
et al. [1] have shown as first a possible 3-D structure for thermopiles ple, a dynamically switchable thermal or spatial resolution could be
by using similar designs as applied by bolometers and by integrating realized.
the sensor on pillars. Due to this layout, the whole space under the
thermopile is available for readout-circuits and a fill factor (FF) of
nearly 100% can be reached. II. DESIGN AND MODELING
This structure can be manufactured by a sacrificial layer process,
A. Fundamentals
which would be also compatible with post-complementary metal–
oxide semiconductor (CMOS) integration. In Fig. 1, the schematic representation of the proposed thermopile
The schematic structure of the thermopile pixel is shown in Fig. 1. is shown. The thermopile consists of two different materials A (blue)
The active parts for the thermoelectric conversion are the red and and B (red) arranged as pillars or tubes. These tubes are hollow and
blue colored tubes. They will be fabricated with the minimum possi- low-ohmic electrically connected by the membrane. At the bottom,
they are connected with low resistance to the readout circuit. This
structure is already patented by Verheyen et al. [2].
Corresponding author: Erik Verheyen (e-mail: erik.verheyen@uni-due.de).
Associate Editor: O. Brand. By irradiating the membrane with infrared radiation, a temperature
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LSENS.2018.2829265 difference relative to the substrate occurs inside the tubes A and B

1949-307X C 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.

See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

2500604 VOL. 2, NO. 2, JUNE 2018

(number of tube pairs = N T P ), which will evoke an electrical voltage The noise equivalent temperature difference (NETD) or the smallest
according to the Seebeck effect (U = α AB T ). For a better perfor- possible detectable temperature difference in the measurement scene
mance, the tubes A and B need to have different Seebeck coefficients is shown as
(α AB = α A − α B ). This becomes possible by using different materi- 4F 2 + 1 U R
als, doping, or processing treatment. Therefore, the performance of NETDmin = . (8)
 A P xl I M S
thermoelectrical materials can be defined by the figure of merit for
Here, we can set an F-number of F = 1 and the differential spectral
thermoelectrics zT (1) and its value should be as high as possible [3]
radiation Im with a value of 6.12 W/m2 in the wavelength region from
α 2AB κ AB 8 to 12 μm and an object temperature of 300 K. These approximated
zT = . (1)
λ AB values make it possible to calculate the minimal achievable NETD.
This parameter depends on the electrical conductivity κ AB , the ther-
mal conductivity λ AB , and the sum of Seebeck coefficients α AB of the B. Manufacturing Process
tubes A and B. For manufacturing of these proposed 3-D thermopiles, a sacrificial
Respectively with an optimized geometry and material combina- layer process similar to [5] will be used. With this fabrication method
tion, the cross-sectional area has to be changed for tube A proportion- the silicon substrate is fully usable for post-CMOS integration like
ally to tube B (2) [3] as readout circuits or similar application. As part of the structuring, holes

will be etched into the sacrificial layer by deep reactive-ion etching
AA κB λB
= . (2) and subsequent homogeneously coated by an atomic layer deposition
AB κ A λb
(ALD) with the different materials A and B. Only with an ALD is
A higher output signal can be achieved with an electrical series a homogenous coating possible for trenches with high aspect ratio.
connection of N T P tubes and with 1/ N T P better thermal isolation. After coating, the ALD materials will be structured on top and the
However, the thermal conductance by radiation G th,S is limiting the sacrificial layer will be removed so that the materials build free stand-
reasonable number of tubes N T P , which are connected thermally to ing hollow tubes with a structured membrane on top. The maximum
one membrane. This is shown in (3) below for a maximum signal height is mainly limited by the mechanical stress in the sacrificial
amplitude at G th = G th,S , [4] as layer. Furthermore, the tube diameter is only limited by the lateral
optical resolution of the structuring tools. The trench walls are not
G th = N T P G th,AB + G th,S (3)
exactly perpendicular, but they can be simplified as a radial layer sys-
with tem: Starting from the outer layer with layer thickness d to smaller
diameter tubes with the same wall thickness d [see Fig. 1(b)].
G th,S = 4k S T03 N P xl A P xl (4) With these assumptions, the thermal conductance of the layered
where G th is the total thermal conductance, ks the Stefan–Boltzmann system can analytically be written as
constant, T0 is the ambient temperature, A pxl is the area of the pixel  Ai
G th,AB = . (9)
membrane, N P xl is the number of thermocouple tubes in series, and ε
i
h λi
is the emissivity.
The sensitivity of thermopiles is shown in (5). If a constant thermal Here, A is the base area of the layers, respectively, the sum over all
conductance can be assumed, the sensitivity increases with a grow- layers in one tube Ai , h is the height, and λi is the thermal conductivity
ing number of thermopile legs (tube pairs) (3) [4], αs is here the of the ith layer.
absorptance Likewise, the electrical resistance can be described by the electrical
resistivity κi of the ith layer as
α S N T P α AB
S= . (5)  h
G th R AB = . (10)
i
Ai κi
The main noise type for thermopiles at room temperature operation
is the Johnson noise Ur , which is defined as
C. Modeling of the Thermopile

Ur = 4k B N T P R AB T  f . (6)
The performance of the thermopile sensor can be modeled by equa-
In the formula, k B is the Boltzmann-constant, R AB the electrical tions from the available literature extended by the number of tubes
resistant of the tube pair A and B, T the operational temperature of the [4], [6]. Accordingly, we calculated the geometry and material fac-
sensor, and f the bandwidth of the measurement setup, which is here tors and the depending transport coefficients like R AB and G AB for
normalized to 1 Hz. different variable ranges. Furthermore, the absorptance of irradiating
A further important performance parameter for comparing different light was assumed to be 100% for better comparability, because there
thermopile structures is the specific detectivity D∗ , which is are many different ways to achieve an absorptance of >90% [7], [8].
√ Additionally, the electrical connection between the materials A and B
∗ A P xl
D =S F F. (7) on the membrane side is low-ohmic, the emissivity only depends on
Ur the properties of the membrane and the thermal time constant. The
For a better comparability, the FF should be added, because the 3-D time dependent effects are not considered in this model.
structures allow us to utilize the area under the membrane for example The absorptance of the irradiating power is approximately
for the readout circuits [1]. 1.978 W/m2 in a wavelength area from 8 to 12 μm, and the maximum
 VOL. 2, NO. 2, JUNE 2018 2500604

Table 1. Transport Properties of Thermopile Materials. Table 2. Calculated Parameters of the Thermopile IR-Sensor With
Different Materials (Structure Height = 2.5 μm).

By using the special case of series connection of pixels, the sensi-

tivity (11), the specific detectivity (12), and the NETD (13) change as
follows:
α S N T P α AB
SSeries = (11)
N T P G th,AB + G th,S
√
∗ N P xl A P xl
DSeries = S√ FF (12)
4k B N T P R AB T  f
4F 2 + 1 UR
NETDMin,Series = . (13)
 N P xl A P xl I M SSeries
Fig. 2. Plots of calculated specific detectivity (left) and NETD (right) in
variation of the number of N T P between 1 and 20 and different mem-
brane sizes from 25 up to 100 μm (N P xl = 1).
In addition, it is assumed that all pixels are irradiated with the same
amount of radiation. If any pixel is blind or dead, these equations
change from (11)–(13) to (14)–(16), respectively, as follows:

α S N T P (1 − qdead ) α AB
SSeries,d = (14)
N T P G th,AB + G th,S
√
∗ N P xl A P xl
DSeries,d =S  FF (15)
4k B 1−qdead N T P R AB T  f
1

4F 2 + 1 UR
NETDMin,Series,d = . (16)
 N P xl A P xl I M SSeries,d

Here, q is the proportionate value of not irradiated pixels of the

Fig. 3. Plots of calculated specific detectivity (left) and NETD (right) in
variation of the number of N T P = N P xl between 1 and 20 and different
sensor combination. s_0  is the series connection with 0  resistance,
s_2k  with 2 k additional resistance, and s_dead series connection
with the half of the number of dead pixels.
irradiating power resides at 9.6 μm. Convection can be neglected be-
cause of operating in a vacuum enclosure. Losses due to the emissivity
of the membrane surface are considered in G th,s . The bulk material
properties for the calculation are given in Table 1, whereas p-Bi2 Te3
and n-Bi2 Te3 are the ALD material properties. A chemical stable mate-
rial layer surrounds the tubes and all layers have a thickness of 10 nm.
For better efficiency, the layer thickness can be changed according
to (2).
Alternatively, electrical different assemblies can increase the per-
formance of these 3-D thermopiles. At this point, two different assem-
blies will be introduced. First, an increasing number NT P of tube pairs
under one membrane. Second, a series connection of 25 μm (mem-
brane) sized pixels with only one tube pair each (NT P = N P xl ) is built
to get a kind of “super-pixel.” For the described conditions, the sensor
performance specific detectivity and the NETD are plotted in Figs. 2
and 3.
“super-pixel” (qdead,max < 1). Therefore, only a fraction of the signal
contributes to the sensitivity N T P (1 − qdead ). For the specific detectiv-
ity, this quantity is N T P /(1 − qdead ). Furthermore, the Johnson-noise
will be increased, and it results in a decreasing of the overall specific
detectivity by the factor of (1 − q)3/2 . The reason for this is the
additional purely ohmic resistance of the dead pixels.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. Standalone Pixel
The thermopile is currently in fabrication with AZO/TiN as ther-
moelectrical materials, where the parameters are listed in Table 2. In
addition, we want to emphasize that better materials can be used to
gain a higher efficiency. For example, a 25-μm√ two-tubes thermopile
with Bi2 Te3 could achieve a D∗ of 1.15e8 cm HzW−1 .
As already mentioned, the time dependent calculations are not car-
ried out. For evaluation, (11)–(13) are used as described above, and
a parameter sweep was done. In Fig. 2, the specific detectivity and
the NETD for different sized pixels (N P xl = 1) are shown for a tube
structure height of 2.5 μm using different numbers of tube pairs (NT P )
under each membrane.
2500604
B. Series Connection of N Pixels
In addition, we calculated an electrical serial connection of many
pixels with only one tube pair grouped to one “super-pixel.” The
following results were calculated for 25-μm pixel-membranes with
only one thermocouple connection (s_0 ). The results for NT P =
N P xl are shown in Fig. 3. With increasing pixel number N P xl , the mem-
brane area increases and the thermocouple number NT P increases,
respectively; see also (12) and (13). It is shown that the NETD of one
100-μm pixel with the same number of thermocouples can also be
reached by connecting a group of pixels in series (super-pixel). The
series connection has no impact on specific detectivity and sensitivity
so both parameters remain constant; see (11) and (12).
Furthermore, we investigated that impact the electrical connection
itself has on the NETD or the specific detectivity and that performance
losses are expectable. Additionally, in Fig. 3, (s_dead) is the impact of
dead pixels of a “super-pixel” on the performance shown, respectively,
where only the half of the “super-pixel” is irradiated [see (14)–(16)].
In addition to a purely ohmic connection, the use of a transistor
is also possible for the dynamic switching from standalone pixels to
super-pixel for different measurement scenarios. For this purpose, the
resistance of the transistor channel needs to be regarded, whereas the
1/f-noise of the transistor can be neglected. Therefore, for every addi-
tional transistor, a 2-k resistance can be assumed for the calculation,
which increases the Johnson noise. In Fig. 3, it is shown that the 2-
k additional resistance decreases the specific detectivity and that the
NETD increases by ∼38.7%, respectively. For the dead pixels, the
scaling is ∼64.6%.
IV. CONCLUSION
Summarizing, a potential new geometry for 3-D thermopiles with a
sacrificial layer process was shown. A sacrificial layer is used as a neg-
ative template wherein the walls are ALD coated with thermoelectric
materials to build hollow tubes as a thermal isolation to the substrate
and, additionally, as a thermoelectric active connection. The√calculated
specific detectivity for the proposed geometry is 1.12e8 cm Hz · W−1
with bulk values (AZO/TiN) and is even better with Bi2 Te3 as an ALD
material. With this design, the new array circuitry is also possible.
The calculation revealed that combining many pixels to one “super-
pixel” could be an additional feature in some situations where a better
temperature resolution is necessary. Out of a manufacturers’ point of
view, it would be possible to fabricate different array geometries with
the same pixels, whereby cost reduction for mass-markets could be
VOL. 2, NO. 2, JUNE 2018
achieved. The option for a dynamic switching of thermal or spatial
resolution is interesting for application where the array is used for
different scenarios, like surveillance cameras or movement detectors,
where for example, the array could be divided into four super-pixels
and only the temperature change between these pixels is measured. In
case of a detected change, the camera switches into spatial resolution
mode to check whether the detected alteration is, for instance, caused
by a human or an animal.
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