Research progress of uncooled infrared detectors(Invited)

Uncooled infrared detectors are widely used in the infrared field due to their low cost, small size, and low power consumption because they do not need the cooling device and can work at room temperature. In military application field, the uncooled detector has gradually entered the application domain of previous refrigerated detector, and has been widely used in some low-cost weapon systems, even replaced the original uncooled detectors in some application fields. In the civil field, it has shown its advantages in price and ease of use, and has aroused widespread interest and attention in civil in-vehicle night vision, security monitoring and other application field. The working theory of several typical uncooled infrared detectors such as Bolometer, pyroelectric, thermopile, etc. were introduced, and the status of the main products that have been commercialized at home and abroad was enumerated, the development of pixel pitch, array specifications, performance and packaging of mainstream bolometer devices was focused, which were currently the most widely used. In addition to the bolometer, pyroelectric, SOI diode and other products that had been commercialized, some new uncooled detection technologies or new detectors were introduced in detail: such as the application of metasurfaces in enhancing absorption in certain wavebands, the research progress of new materials bolometer, new bi-material uncooled devices, graphene, quantum dots, nanowires and other photoelectric detection technologies. Finally, the future development trend of uncooled infrared detectors were predicted in the end of the review.