Recently developed wide-bandwidth HgCdTe photodiodes and photoconductors have shown near-ideal heterodyne performance and have led to greatly increased CO2 laser heterodyne system capabilities. For example, NEPs as low as 4.3 x 10^-20 W/Hz at 1 GHz have been achieved with 77K photodiodes and photodiode arrays, and an NEP of 1.8 x 10^-19 W/Hz at 40 MHz has been realized with a p-type HgCdTe photoconductor operating at 195K. In this paper, design considerations (including limitations due to various HgCdTe material parameters), performance predictions and the current technological status of wide-bandwidth HgCdTe photodiodes are presented. In addition, the use of p-type HgCdTe photoconductors as elevated-temperature photomixers are discussed and some recent results are presented.

Date Published: 30 April 1982
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 0300, Physics and Technology of Coherent Infrared Radar I, (30 April 1982); doi: 10.1117/12.932589

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0300:
Physics and Technology of Coherent Infrared Radar I
Robert C. Harney, Editor(s)