HgCdTe APD-focal plane array performance at DEFIR

Johan Rothman; Eric De Borniol; Philippe Ballet; Laurent Mollard; Sylvain Gout; M. Fournier; Jean-Paul Chamonal; Gérard Destéfanis; Frederic Pistone; Solène Courtas; Xavier Lefoule; Philip Tribolet

doi:10.1117/12.819320

6 May 2009 HgCdTe APD-focal plane array performance at DEFIR

Johan Rothman, Eric De Borniol, Philippe Ballet, Laurent Mollard, Sylvain Gout, M. Fournier, Jean-Paul Chamonal, Gérard Destéfanis, Frederic Pistone, Solène Courtas, Xavier Lefoule, Philip Tribolet

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 7298, Infrared Technology and Applications XXXV; 729835 (2009) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.819320
Event: SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing, 2009, Orlando, Florida, United States

Abstract

The optimization of HgCdTe avalanche-photo-diodes (e-APD) and focal plane arrays (FPA) are reported. The gain performances was measured in planar homo-junction APDs with Cd compositions between x_Cd=0.3 to 0.41. Exponentially increasing gain, synonym of exclusive electron multiplication, was observed in all the devices up to M>100. The high gain at high x_Cd opens the path to thermo-electric cooled active imaging at T=200K. This perspective is corroborated by the demonstration of high gains and low excess noise factor F=1.2 in extrinsically doped MW-APDs, which enables reduced dark-current at high temperatures. The equivalent input dark current (Ieq_in) decreased from 200 fA to 1 fA, when the cut-off wavelength was reduced from λ _c=5.2 μm to 4.1 μm at M=100 and T=80 K. This shows that sensitivity can be optimized by increasing xCd, at the cost of increased reverse bias. A new horizontal-gain-well (HGW) hetero-structure was processed to optimize the sensitivity at high gain and low bias. The first HGW-APDs had gains comparables with MW e-APDs and 50 times lower dark-current at T=200 K. They did also display surprisingly high quantum efficiency in the MWIR range, η_peak=30%, which enables thermal imaging at high operating temperature. The high performance of MW-APDs was confirmed by the characterizations of a first 320x256 30μm pitch APD-FPA, yielding a 99.8 % operability, low gain dispersion (<10%) and low noise equivalent photons (NEPh=3 at t_int=1 μs) for gains up to M=70. The maturity of the DEFIR HgCdTe e-APD-FPA technology was highlighted by the first demonstration of passive amplified imaging.

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Johan Rothman, Eric De Borniol, Philippe Ballet, Laurent Mollard, Sylvain Gout, M. Fournier, Jean-Paul Chamonal, Gérard Destéfanis, Frederic Pistone, Solène Courtas, Xavier Lefoule, and Philip Tribolet "HgCdTe APD-focal plane array performance at DEFIR", Proc. SPIE 7298, Infrared Technology and Applications XXXV, 729835 (6 May 2009); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.819320

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