Design and Develoment of High Performace Microbolometer using VOx, CNT and Graphene for IR Applications

The Microbolometer based IRFPA’s are currently in production for defense and Security applications. The microbolometer performance is limited by the TCR and frequency of operation. The proposed Phase II SBIR will allow DARPA to explore the further enhancement in TCR by more than an order of magnitude and higher frequency of operation from current 100 Hz. These improvements will allow use of the microbolometer technology for a variety of defense system applications, that the current technology is limited in performance. Magnolia Optical will focus on further enhancement in the Temperature coefficient of Resistance (TCR) by combing CNT and Graphene based nanotechnology to further enhance detector performance and demonstrate the higher frequency of operation to 1 KHz. Graphene and CNT offer very exciting opportunity to enhance the performance of the bolometer arrays. The CNT and Graphene will be incorporated with the VOx layers to demonstrate higher TCR and higher frequency of operation. Magnolia and its team will both theoretically and experimentally demonstrate that the process is producible and can be incorporated in the current process technology.