This paper concerns HgCdTe (MCT) infrared photoconductor detectors with high operating temperature. The near room temperature operation of detectors have advantages of light weight, less cost and convenient usage. Their performances are modest and they suffer from reliable problems. These detectors face with stability of the package, chip bonding area and passivation layers. It's important to evaluate and improve the reliability of such detectors. Defective detectors were studied with SEM(Scanning electron microscope) and microscopy. Statistically significant differences were observed between the influence of operating temperature and the influence of humidity. It was also found that humility has statistically significant influence upon the stability of the chip bonding and passivation layers, and the amount of humility isn't strongly correlated to the damage on the surface. Considering about the commonly found failures modes in detectors, special test structures were designed to improve the reliability of detectors. An accelerated life test was also implemented to estimate the lifetime of the high operating temperature MCT photoconductor detectors.

Date Published: 22 October 2010
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 7658, 5th International Symposium on Advanced Optical Manufacturing and Testing Technologies: Optoelectronic Materials and Devices for Detector, Imager, Display, and Energy Conversion Technology, 765849 (22 October 2010); doi: 10.1117/12.865502

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7658:
5th International Symposium on Advanced Optical Manufacturing and Testing Technologies: Optoelectronic Materials and Devices for Detector, Imager, Display, and Energy Conversion Technology
Yadong Jiang; Bernard Kippelen; Junsheng Yu, Editor(s)