Feasibility of electrical-contact free measurement of the response of superconductive bolometer arrays using the thermal crosstalk

We utilized and investigated the unique dependence of the magnitude and phase of the response on the thermal crosstalk between bolometer pixels in an array to measure the response of the devices through fewer monitoring devices. In this study, we show the feasibility of the proposed read-out technique by use of two source pixels in an array, as the image-mapping devices, and one optically shielded pixel as the read-out device. While the sense pixels were electrical-contact free, the read-out device was current biased in 4-probe current-bias configuration. Both the phase and magnitude of the response due to the crosstalk in the array were found to be strongly dependent on the modulation frequency and the distance between the sense and read-out pixels. A series of measurements were designed to extract the response of each single sense-pixel. By combining the measured data, the response of individual pixels could be extracted through the interpolation of the mapped responses. © 2006 IOP Publishing Ltd.