JimmyAlz said:
The bolometer elements does not overheat because:
1) There is always some heat loss through conduction to the substrate.
2) There is always some heat loss through blackbody radiation to/from the sensor case.
3) When designing bolometer elements you *want* to have some heat loss, otherwise you would get a strong after image on the sensor.
4) The heat flux into the bolometer is a function of the difference in temperatures between the object imaged and the bolometer; If the object is cooler than the bolometer this will effectively cool the bolometer somewhat.
Anyway the reason for cooling the bolometers are that the sensitivity is greatly increased
since the incoming radiation power is a function of the difference in temperatures raised to the fourth power.
So I have been doing quite a bit of research on this and it turns out that you can order the advanced VLSI micro controlers on sparkfun.com as well as the LCD display, the crux is the microbolo meter itself, the only place I could find that sells them in FLIR and they are a fortune. I researched further into the actual manufacture of a microbolo meter and from what I could find it is a 10-15 step masking process to make one, I have had microelectronics in my chemE undergrad and have taken several undergrad prereqs in EE to prep for my MS in EE and I think it would be doable to set up a process to make one of these. Does anyone know of a text ISBN that goes into the detailed steps to making one of these? Since I have experience in microelectronics fabrication I looked up the cost of teh basic equipment and the most expensive components are the plasma etcher and the ovens for doping, however, the plasma etcher can be substituted by chemical etching and I MAY be able to rent out time in an art kiln if there is any doping (will have to check the required temp ranges).
FLIR has their microbolo meters priced WAY to high, from what I have read a microbolo meter is numerous orders of magnitude simpler than the processor in your computer yet they want a fortune for them, there is a lot of room for competetion there ... unless of course this is a secret proprietary method that no one knows about and no text exists with any truly useful information, which I highly doubt considering how long this stuff has been around.
The only other thing would be having a housing built and figuring out how to zoom.
The last angle will be to figure out how to display both visible light image and IR image on the same LCD display without having a separate scope so that the image you are seeing with the IR and VL is the same and not offset. I wonder if you could put the IR sensor behind the VL sensor and make the VL sensor in such a way that the IR radiation will pass through unobstructed, of course then there are zoom issues and the lense for VL would have to be invisible to the IR and you would have to figure out how to get an even zoom.
But for now I just want to figure out how a microbolo meter is made, vacuum pumps are not to expensive for metal deposition, however, I have not priced all the chemicals, that purple solution you use before you mask and expose to UV could be pricy. I know boron dopant is not cheap.
If there is any company that sells a solid high resolution microbolo that would be ideal, not some crappy one they put in toys.
I am still not sure what the high performance analog amplifier plays in all this? The new micro controlers you can buy have analog to digital inputs to display on the LCD built in which is pretty sweet, so its just a matter of programing the MC to interface with a microbolo meter.
