HgCdTe (MCT) is predominantly used for infrared imaging applications even in SWIR region. However, MCT is expensive and contains environmentally hazardous substances. Therefore, its application has been restricted mainly military and scientific use and was not spread to commercial use. InGaAs/GaAsSb type-II quantum well structures are considered as an attractive material for realizing low dark current PDs owing to lattice-matching to InP substrate. Moreover, III-V compound material systems are suitable for commercial use. In this report, we describe successful operation of focal plane array (FPA) with InGaAs/GaAsSb quantum wells and mention improvement of optical characteristics. Planar type pin-PDs with 250-pairs InGaAs(5nm)/GaAsSb(5nm) quantum well absorption layer were fabricated. The p-n junction was formed in the absorption layer by the selective diffusion of zinc. Electrical and optical characteristics of FPA or pin-PDs were investigated. Dark current of 1μA/cm² at 210K, which showed good uniformity and led to good S/N ratio in SWIR region, was obtained. Further, we could successfully reduce of stray light in the cavity of FPA with epoxy resin. As a result, the clear image was taken with 320x256 format and 7% contrast improvement was achieved. Reliability test of 10,000 heat cycles was carried out. No degradations were found in FPA characteristics of the epoxy coated sample. This result means FPA using InGaAs/GaAsSb type-II quantum wells is a promising candidate for commercial applications.

Date Published: 17 June 2016
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 9819, Infrared Technology and Applications XLII, 98190C (17 June 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2229591

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9819:
Infrared Technology and Applications XLII
Bjørn F. Andresen; Gabor F. Fulop; Charles M. Hanson; Paul R. Norton, Editor(s)