甚长波量子阱红外探测器的暗电流特性研究

基于载流子在量子结构中的输运理论研究了甚长波量子阱红外探测器(峰值响应波长15μm，量子阱个数大于40)的载流子的输运性质.研究结果表明，在甚长波量子阱红外探测器中，电流密度一般很低，暗电流主要来源于能量高于势垒边的热激发电子.通过薛定谔方程和泊松方程以及电流的连续性方程的自洽求解，发现外加偏压下电子浓度在甚长波器件各量子阱的分布发生较大变化，电场在整个器件结构上呈非均匀分布，靠近发射极层的势垒承担的电压远远高于均匀分布的情形.平带模型假定电压在器件体系上均匀分布，导致小偏压下的理论计算值远远低于实验值. 关键词： 甚长波量子阱红外探测器 量子波输运 暗电流

Study of the dark current in very long wavelength quantum well infrared photodetectors

A study of the carrier transport performance of GaAs/AlGaAs very long wavelength quantum well infrared photodetectors (peak wavelength: 15 μm; period: >40) has been carried out based on quantum wave transport theory. It was shown that the thermoexcitation effect dominates in the devices. By the current continuity and self-consistent calculation based on Schrdinger equation and Poisson equation, we found that the main feature resulting from the model is the redistribution of the carriers and the electric field along the whole structure being made uneven to maintain current conservation. The high-field region extends over a few barriers near the emitter contact, which takes up a considerable part of the applied voltage. The conventional flat band model assumes that the applied voltage drops linearly across the structure, leading to the numerical value of dark current to be far from the experiments, especially at small bias. The numerical result of self-consistent calculation well explains the measurement data.