Microbolometer development and production at Indigo Systems
William A. Terre, Robert Frank Cannata, Patrick Franklin, Alfredo Gonzalez, Eric Kurth, Hiep Ly, William J. Parrish, Kevin Peters, Tommie Romeo, Robert VanYsseldyk · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2003
While microbolometers have been in production for several years, the number of companies producing them is quite small. Indigo Systems has entered into the development and production of VOx based microbolometers, at its Goleta facility. Through the investment of significant capital, Indigo has established a high volume production facility based on the silicon industry model. The 6-inch, cassette-to-cassette, highly automated facility is capable of yielding hundreds of thousands of die per year. Discussed in the paper will be the design and layout of the facility, performance of the devices, as well as yield, trend and throughput data.