Exposure to proton radiation degrades the performance of wavelength infrared (MWIR) and long wavelength infrared (LWIR) HgCdTe photodetectors to varying degrees depending on the dose and energy of the incident particles. We report an experimental characterization of test devices of multiple sizes and configurations designed to investigate the effect proton radiation has on detector performance. Photodetector devices, from test element devices to fully functional focal plane arrays, are processed into MWIR and LWIR HgCdTe material grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), in both single and two-color architectures, on CdZnTe and CdTe-buffered Si substrates. The devices receive doses of 30 krad(Si) and 100 krad(Si) from an incident beam of 63 MeV protons. The lower dose induces negligible degradation. At the higher dose, MWIR detectors begin to show reduced activation energy for higher temperatures, while LWIR detectors are more strongly affected with the activation energy being halved following proton irradiation.

Date Published: 17 September 2014
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 9226, Nanophotonics and Macrophotonics for Space Environments VIII, 92260P (17 September 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2064074

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9226:
Nanophotonics and Macrophotonics for Space Environments VIII
Edward W. Taylor; David A. Cardimona, Editor(s)