Uncooled nonequilibrium HgCdTe IR detector modeling

Tae-Seok Lee; Renganathan Ashokan; Christoph H. Grein; Sung-Shik Yoo; Sivalingam Sivananthan

doi:10.1117/12.391750

17 July 2000 Uncooled nonequilibrium HgCdTe IR detector modeling

Tae-Seok Lee, Renganathan Ashokan, Christoph H. Grein, Sung-Shik Yoo, Sivalingam Sivananthan

Proceedings Volume 4028, Infrared Detectors and Focal Plane Arrays VI; (2000) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.391750
Event: AeroSense 2000, 2000, Orlando, FL, United States

Abstract

The narrow gap semiconductor HgCdTe is commonly used for IR detection. Conventional HgCdTe IR detectors need significant cooling in order to reduce noise and leakage currents resulting from thermal generation and recombination processes. These cooling requirements considerably increase the cost, size, weight and complexity of infrared systems. The need for cooling to reduce noise and leakage currents resulting from Auger processes has long been thought to be fundamental and inevitable. However, recently, it has been suggested that by means of a steady-state non-equilibrium mode of operation, which holds the carrier densities below their equilibrium values, Auger generation and even radiative generation rates can be reduced. This is possible through the reduction of carrier concentrations because the Auger generation rate depends approximately on the square of the carrier concentration and radiative recombination rate depends linearly on it. This paper reports the modeling of a HgCdTe detector operated in a steady-state non-equilibrium mode at 230 approximately equals 295 K. The device architecture, NvP⁺, which is practical in MBE growth, is suitable for this application. Radiative and Auger lifetimes, zero surface recombination velocities, and zero background photon fluxes are assumed. The dependence of detectivity on minority carrier extraction efficiency is studied in this paper. At 230 and 250 K for N_D equals 1 X 10^{14approximately equals 15} cm^-3, the detectivity appears to become saturated at values in the order of 10¹⁰ cm Hz^1/2/W when the minority carrier extraction efficiency is greater than 3.

Citation Download Citation

Tae-Seok Lee, Renganathan Ashokan, Christoph H. Grein, Sung-Shik Yoo, and Sivalingam Sivananthan "Uncooled nonequilibrium HgCdTe IR detector modeling", Proc. SPIE 4028, Infrared Detectors and Focal Plane Arrays VI, (17 July 2000); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.391750

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