Corrugated Quantum-Well Infrared Photodetector Focal Plane Arrays

High speed QWIP FPAs on InP substrates

“…This study demonstrates that alternative material systems offer possibilities to overcome the main bottleneck of this technology for most applications. The possibility of light coupling efficiency (g) improvement through utilization of corrugated structure [3] must be investigated in order to have high quantum efficiency and large gain at the same time. This could result in a breakthrough in this important sensor technology.…”

“…Thicker active regions and corrugated mesa structures provide enhanced quantum efficiencies [3]. However, QWIPs based on the (standard) AlGaAs/GaAs material system still suffer from insufficient conversion efficiency (g.g product) due to the limited gain of GaAs QWIPs.…”

C-QWIPs for space exploration

“…In this section, we apply the classical geometric-optical (GO) C-QWIP model [1] to one of the FPAs developed for a thermal infrared sensor (TIRS) instrument [2]. To predict the external quantum efficiency g of a C-QWIP FPA, the absorption coefficient a(k) of the QWIP material is first calculated for parallel propagating light with a proper polarization.…”

“…(2), t s is the substrate transmission, f p is the pixel fill factor, g int is the internal quantum efficiency, j is a factor proportional to the thickness of the active layer inside a corrugation [1], p is the pixel linear dimension, t is the corrugation height, and c(V) is the transmission coefficient of a photoelectron traveling out of the QW at a bias V. The resulting photocurrent J p generated within a C-QWIP pixel is then…”

Progress in resonator quantum well infrared photodetector (R-QWIP) focal plane arrays

“…In parallel with the success and limitations of III-V AlGaAs/(In)GaAs QWIP technology, the infrared (IR) research community has also maintained an interest in other III-V technologies such as InAs/(In)GaSb type-II strained layer superlattices (SLS) and InAs/InAsSb Ga-free materials [3,4]. However, to address the perceived limitations of first generation QWIP technology, Choi et al has provided new modeling and fabrication techniques in diffractive element and resonant structure design to further push the boundaries of QWIP performance [5][6][7][8]. The advances of Choi's three-dimensional finite element electromagnetic (EM) modeling techniques offer theoretical simulations of new high performance QWIP designs and provide an transferable framework that makes this resonator technology accessible to other existing detector technologies.…”