New generation of uncooled thermal detectors: A review

At the current stage of development of infrared detector technology in the long-wave infrared range, the only detector arrays available on the market that operate at room temperature are thermal detectors. Among these, monolithic microbolometer arrays are the most popular with production volumes exceeding those of all other infrared array technologies combined. However, the efficiency of thermal detectors is modest; they exhibit a slow response time and are not very useful for multispectral detection. For this reason, new ideas for thermal detector designs and new materials that meet the expected performance requirements are being sought. High hopes are pinned on a new generation of thermal detectors based on low-dimensional solid (LDS) materials. It is predicted that the fundamental properties of LDS thermal detectors, driven by the quantum-size effect, enable them to overcome the performance limitations of conventional bulk detectors. This paper aims to organise existing knowledge on this subject, compile current detector performance data, and identify potential directions for further development. It focuses on several types of thermal detectors operating at room temperature: photothermoelectric, bolometric, pyroelectric, nanoelectromechanical resonator, and CMOS-compatible detectors.