Graphene-Based Thermopile for Thermal Imaging Applications

In this work, we leverage graphene's unique tunable Seebeck coefficient for the demonstration of a graphene-based thermal imaging system. By integrating graphene based photothermo-electric detectors with micromachined silicon nitride membranes, we are able to achieve room temperature responsivities on the order of similar to 7-9 V/W (at lambda = 10.6 mu m), with a time constant of similar to 23 ms. The large responsivities, due to the combination of thermal isolation and broadband infrared absorption from the underlying SiN membrane, have enabled detection as well as stand-off imaging of an incoherent blackbody target (300-500 K). By comparing the fundamental achievable performance of these graphene-based thermopiles with standard thermocouple materials, we extrapolate that graphene's high carrier mobility can enable improved performances with respect to two main figures of merit for infrared detectors: detectivity (>8 X 10(8) cm Hz(1/2)W(-1)) and noise equivalent temperature difference (<100 mK). Furthermore, even average graphene carrier mobility (<1000 cm(2) V-1 s(-1)) is still sufficient to detect the emitted thermal radiation from a human target.