Monolithic uncooled IR detectors of polycrystalline PbSe: a real alternative

Paradoxically more than 50 years after being used in WWII, polycrystalline PbSe technology has turned today into an emerging technology. Without any doubt one of the main facts responsible for the PbSe resurgence is a new method for processing detectors based on a Vapour Phase Deposition (VPD) technique developed at CIDA. Using this method, the first low density 2D PbSe Focal Plane Array (FPA), an x-y addressed type device, was processed on silicon. Even though the last advances have been important they are not yet enough to consider this technology as a real alternative to other uncooled technologies. To reach technical relevance and commercial interest it is obligated to integrate monolithically or hybridize the sensors with their corresponding read out electronics (ROIC). Aiming to process monolithic devices, a proper CMOS read out electronics were designed. In parallel, enabled technologies were developed for adapting the material peculiarities to the CMOS substrates. In this work, the first monolithic device of VPD PbSe is presented. Even though it is a modest 16x16 FPA with a pitch of 200 μm, it represents an important milestone, allocating polycrystalline PbSe among the major players in the short list of uncooled IR detectors. Unlike microbolometers and ferroelectrics, it is a photonic detector suitable for being used as a detector in low cost IR imagers sensitive to the MWIR band and with frame rates as high as 1000 fps. The number of applications is therefore huge, some of them specific, unique and highly demanded in the military and security fields such as sensors applied to fast imagers, Active Protection Systems or low cost seekers.