SPICE-Compatible Modeling of a Microbolometer Package Including Thermoelectric Cooler

Abstract

For a successful commercialization of microbolometer, it is required to develop a robust package including thermal stabilizing mechanism. In order to regulate the temperature within some operating range, thermoelectric cooler is generally used but it's not easy to model the whole package due to the coupled physics nature of thermoelectric cooler. In this paper, SPICE-compatible modeling methodology of a microbolometer package is presented, whose steady-state results matched well with FEM results at the maximum difference of 5.95%. Although the time constant difference was considerable as 15.7%, it can be offset by the quite short simulation time compared to FEM simulation. The developed model was also proven to be useful for designing the thermal stabilizer through parametric and transient analyses under the various working conditions. Keywords : Microbolometer, Thermoelectric cooler, MEMS, package, SPICE 1 2 3 + Corresponding author: sohan@hoseo.edu (Received : Oct. 2, 2012, Revised : Nov. 29, 2012, Accepted : Dec. 9, 2012 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync/3.0)which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.