Free-standing epitaxial YBa₂Cu₃O₇ microbolometers on silicon substrates

Silicon micromachining technology is applied to fabricate free-standing YBCOmicrobolometers. High-quality YBCO films, grown by thermal co-evaporation on silicon substrates are processed by optical photolithography in combination with ion beam etching and selective plasma etching to fabricate free-standing 3 μm wide meander lines up to a length of 210 μm. The bolometric effect of these devices has been studied with chopped IR illumination at a wavelength of 1.3 μm. For a bolometer device, excellent speed performance is observed. The 10% to 90% rise and fall time, between the OFF and ON states is as low as 115 μs.