Enhanced Performance of Ru-Based Infrared Imaging Sensor Array With Electrospun Thermal Isolation Structure

Predicting and optimizing thermal conductivity of materials used in infrared thermal imaging sensors is an effective method to improve thermal isolation performance, which can substantially reduce the thermal crosstalk among pixels. This article reports an electrospun poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluorethylene) (P(VDF-TrFE)) nanofiber film used as an adiabatic support structure in thermal sensor array and investigates its effect on imaging performance of thermal sensor. Based on solid heat transfer simulation, the thermal conductivities of electrospun P(VDF-TrFE) films with different packing ratios were theoretically calculated, showing a significant decrease compared with the spin-coated counterpart. The temperature increment of thermal sensor using nanofiber film with 43.71% packing ratio is calculated as 1.68 times higher than that using spin-coated film. An average temperature rise of 1.73 times was experimentally obtained, and the thermal response time was also reduced to half, compared with the sensor using spin-coated film. The method of improving thermal isolation performance using electrospun fibrous film could be of great advantage to high-sensitivity infrared imaging sensor.