Assessment of HgCdTe photodiodes and quantum well infrared photoconductors for long wavelength focal plane arrays

Recent trends in infrared detectors are towards large, electronically addressed two-dimensional arrays. In the long wavelength infrared (LWIR) spectral range HgCdTe focal plane arrays (FPAs) occupy a dominant position. However, the slow progress in the development of large LWIR photovoltaic HgCdTe infrared imaging arrays and the rapid achievements of novel semiconductor heterostructure systems have made it necessary to foresee the future development of different material technologies in fabrication large FPAs. Among the competing technologies in LWIR are the quantum well infrared photoconductors (QWIPs) based on lattice matched GaAs/AlGaAs and strained layer InGaAs/AlGaAs material systems. This paper compares the technical merits of two IR detector arrays technologies; photovoltaic HgCdTe and QWIPs. It is clearly shown that LWIR QWIP cannot compete with HgCdTe photodiode as the single device especially at higher temperature operation (>70 K) due to fundamental limitations associated with intersubband transitions. However, the advantage of HgCdTe is less distinct in temperature range below 50 K due to problems involved in HgCdTe material (p-type doping, Shockley–Read recombination, trap-assisted tunnelling, surface and interface instabilities). Even though the QWIP is a photoconductor, several of its properties such as high impedance, fast response time, long integration time, and low power consumption, well satisfy the requirements of fabrication of large FPAs. Due to the high material quality at low temperature, QWIP has potential advantages over HgCdTe for very LWIR (VLWIR) FPA applications in terms of the array size, uniformity, yield and cost of the systems.