Room-temperature THz antenna-coupled microbolometer with a Joule-heating resistor at the center of a half-wave antenna

We have proposed and fabricated an antenna-coupled microbolometer with a Joule-heating resistor at the center of a half-wave antenna on a Si substrate to achieve a high-performance sensing in 1 THz frequency region at a room-temperature. The heater is directly connected to a half-wave antenna at its center and the thermistor is thermally contacted to but electrically isolated from the heater by a thin insulator film, by which the impedances of heater and thermistor can be optimized independently. The performance measurements using a 1 THz source has proved the bolometer detects the THz wave by the receiving antenna and this structure has the advantage in realizing high-performance room-temperature THz detectors.