International Journal of Infrared and Millimeter Waves, VoL 17, No. 4, 1996 100 mK BOLOMETERS FOR THE SUBMILLIMETRE COMMON-USER BOLOMETER ARRAY (SCUBA) I. DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION W. S. Holland, 1 R A. R. Ade, M. J. Griffin, I. D. Hepburn, 2 and D. G. Vickers Department of Physics, Queen Mary and WesO~eldCollege Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, United Kingdom C. R. Cunningham, P. R. Hastings, W. K. Gear, W. D. Duncan, 3 and 1". E. C. Baillie Royal Observatory, Blackford Hill Edinburgh EH9 3HJ, Scotland, United Kingdom E. E. Hailer and J. W. Beeman Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and University of Califonria Berkeley, California 94720 Received December 1, 1995 ABSTRACT We describe the design and construction of bolometric detectors for SCUBA - the Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array for the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii. The instrument contains 131 individual detectors, in two arrays, optimized for the submillimetre a .t.tnaospherictransmission windows. The detectors are cooled by dilution refrigeration to a temperature of 100 mK, so that the receiver performance will be limited by photon noise from the sky and telescope background in all wavebands. A future paper will describe the performance of the detectors with reference to typical data obtained during the laboratory commissioning period. Current addresses: tRoyal Observatory, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh EH9 3HJ, Scotland, U.K. E-mail: wsh@roe.ac.uk; 2MullardSpace Science Laboratory, HolmburySt. Mary, Dorking,Surrey RH5 6NT, U.K.; 3OxfordInstruments,Old Station Way, Eynsham,Oxford OX8 1TL,U.K. 669 0195-9271/96/t)4(]0-0669509.50,~ O 1996 Plenum Publishing Corporation