The nearly lattice-matched InAs/GaSb/AlSb (antimonide) material system offers tremendous flexibility in realizing high-performance infrared detectors. Antimonide-based alloy and superlattice infrared absorbers can be customized to have cutoff wavelengths ranging from the short wave infrared (SWIR) to the very long wave infrared (VLWIR). They can be used in constructing sophisticated heterostructures to enable advanced infrared photodetector designs. In particular, they facilitate the construction of unipolar barriers, which can block one carrier type but allow the unimpeded flow of the other. Unipolar barriers are used to implement the barrier infra-red detector (BIRD) design for increasing the collection efficiency of photo-generated carriers, and reducing dark current generation without impeding photocurrent flow. We report our recent efforts in achieving state-of-the-art performance in antimonide alloy and superlattice based infrared photodetectors using the BIRD architecture. Specifically, we report a 10 μm cutoff superlattice device based on a complementary barrier infrared detector (CBIRD) design. The detector, without antireflection coating or passivation, exhibits a responsivity of 1.5 A/W and a dark current density of 1×10^-5 A/cm² at 77K under 0.2 V bias. It reaches 300 K background limited infrared photodetection (BLIP) operation at 87 K, with a blackbody BLIP D* value of 1.1×10¹¹ cm-Hz^1/2/W for f/2 optics under 0.2 V bias.

Date Published: 3 May 2010
PDF: 14 pages
Proc. SPIE 7660, Infrared Technology and Applications XXXVI, 76601R (3 May 2010); doi: 10.1117/12.851383

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7660:
Infrared Technology and Applications XXXVI
Bjørn F. Andresen; Gabor F. Fulop; Paul R. Norton, Editor(s)