EKLIPSE (Engineered Kapitza-layer Insulation for Phonon Scattering Enhancement)

Physical Sciences Inc. and Sandia National Laboratories will develop ultra-low thermal conductance microbolometer legs with a structured composite material based on tensioned dielectric membranes. The thermal conductance of each leg will be less than 250 pW/K, and the electrical resistance will be less than 200 k?, to achieve high performance and high sensitivity of the bolometer legs. The legs will be an improvement over the current state of the art design, which has orders of magnitude higher thermal conductance. Nanostructure techniques will be used to strongly lower the thermal conductivity of the leg materials. The design will be compatible with a CMOS fabrication process to allow integration into current microbolometer production with ROIC circuits. The material and design of the legs will enable the microbolometer to be mechanically robust against vibration and shock and improve overall performance.