<title>A High Performance 8 TO 12 μm (Hg,Cd)Te 72-Element Detector Array</title>

Abstract

A high performance 8 to 12 pm 72-element (Hg,Cd)Te detector array has been built for an advanced diffraction-limited serial-scanned FLIR system. The average peak detectivity for the array is 1.7 x 1011 cm Hz/W which results in a cumulative detectivity ( / Dj. avg.) of 1.4 x 1012. cm Hz /W. The cumulative detectivity controls system sensitivity. The cumulative D* for this array is over 2.3 times higher than a modular FLIR array with 180 elements and a better than average peak detectivity of 4.5 x 1010 cm Hz2 /W or a cumulative detectivity of 0.6 x 1012 cm Hzz /W. Array and Dewar DesignThe array consists of 72 elements 0.0012 inches square on 0.0018 inch centers arranged into 2 groups of 36 as shown in Figure 1. Producing closely spaced elements this small required improved process uniformity with thickness tolerances of less than 1 pm. A picture of the elements in an array is shown in Figure 2. It is mounted on a sapphire substrate with a metallized fan -out pattern for wire bonding (Figure 3).