The tolerable target temperature for bimaterial microcantilever array infrared imaging

It has been shown that bimaterial microcantilevers can deform as their temperature changes owing to the absorption of infrared radiation. Considering the principle of the cantilever, there must be a temperature detection limit and the microcantilever will be invalid beyond a tolerable temperature. In the paper, we aim to prove the limit and provide an approach to obtain the tolerable target temperature for infrared imaging. A microcantilever array damage experiment using an infrared laser as target was conducted and a method based on optical reflection and CCD measurement principle was proposed to measure the cantilever's critical deflection angle. Furthermore, the tolerable target temperature based on the imaging system was calculated.