Solid –State High Temperature Jet Engine Fire Detector

Available fire/flame detectors are expensive, bulky, and do not operate in harsh environments. Miniature, inexpensive chip-based high-temperature detectors are needed for efficient detection of fires by allowing positioning closer to potential flame sources, and providing a fast and reliable response in separated UV and IR bands with high spatial and time resolution. III-nitride materials are superior for advanced detector fabrication due to their very wide direct band gap, high thermal, chemical, mechanical, and radiation tolerance. We have shown that GaN/InGaN-based heterostructure chips can be operated at temperatures over 300°C without internal or external cooling. Our growth method allows synthesis of binary and ternary nitride layers with precise control over thickness, chemical composition, crystalline quality, and doping. In a single growth process device structures can be achieved on commercial sapphire, silicon and silicon-on-sapphire substrates. PHASE I project resulted in development of a VISIBLE-BLIND dual-band UV/IR photodetector prototype integrated on a single chip. PHASE II objective is to build an INEXPENSIVE chip-integrated dual-band UV/IR SOLAR-BLIND HIGH-TEMPERATURE pre-commercial fire/flame detector prototype with EXTENDED UV and IR characteristics capable of early and reliable detection of jet engine fires, test the prototype on a static engine test bed, and determine its reliability.