Skip to main content
Broadband Thermal Detectors
Above: This graphic depicts the Mars Climate Sounder instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter measuring the temperature of a cross section of the Martian atmosphere as the orbiter passes above the south polar region.

Broadband Thermal Detectors

Microdevices Laboratory (MDL) has a fully customizable thermopile detector technology allowing the pitch, format size, and package to be tailored for specific applications. This technology is specifically well-suited for space-borne radiometric instruments due to the fact the detectors can operate over a wide temperature range (200-350 K), do not require a cryocooler.

Thermopile detectors can detect broadband radiation (0.1-100 um). As a result of basic physics underlying these types of detectors, they exhibit no 1/f noise, making it possible to increase the signal-to-noise by integrating for a long duration. In addition, the detectors are insensitive to instrument drifts making it possible to build highly accurate radiometers without introducing complicated thermal control of the instrument.

The MDL thermopile detector technology is currently in operation on the Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) as part of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the Diviner lunar radiometer flying on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). MCS is now in its 13th year of returning atmospheric profiles from Mars and Diviner has reached a decade of surface mapping from lunar orbit. Below are other programs utilizing this detector technology.

Dr. Robert Green

Dr. Kenyon joined the MDL in 2001. His primary focus has been designing, fabricating, and testing novel thermal detector arrays (i.e., thermopile and transition-edge sensors) for Earth, planetary, and astrophysics projects. He has focused on incorporating the latest materials and microfabrication techniques to develop detectors with unparalleled performance for niche spaceborne applications like the Radiation Budget Instrument (RBI) and the Background-Limited far-Infrared/ Submillimeter Spectrograph (BLISS).


Broadband Thermal Detectors

Products & Processes

Image from MDL Core Competency Project: PREFIRE

PREFIRE

As our planet continues to warm, climate scientists need novel ways of exploring the processes that drive change and of measuring the markers that predict such alterations. These scientists recognize that the remote...

LEARN MORE>>
Image from MDL Core Competency Project: Radiation Budget

Radiation Budget

Studying the radiant energy from objects such as clouds in Earth’s atmosphere can tell us a lot about their behavior and interaction with larger weather systems. JPL has successfully built and flight-qualified the...

LEARN MORE>>
Image from MDL Core Competency Project: SWAMI

SWAMI

IR spectrometers are used to remotely determine molecular structure of various samples. With solids this can identify the mineral composition. The current state-of-the-art for point spectrometers in the Short Wave Infrared...

LEARN MORE>>
Back to top