NASA Postdoctoral Program - Development of Next-Generation Thermopile Arrays for Space Applications

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or at a NASA-affiliated research institute. These one- to three-year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA's missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology. This specific opportunity focuses on developing next-generation thermopile arrays for space applications at JPL. The research involves modernizing thermopile detector technology historically used in solar system exploration missions. The project aims to use new surface- and bulk-micromachining techniques to build 2D thermopile arrays with dramatically increased size, and explore new materials to improve detector sensitivity. This work addresses the demanding requirements of future missions to primitive bodies, planets and their satellites.