Optimization of light polarization sensitivity in QWIP detectors

The current development of QWIPs (Quantum Well Infrared Photodetectors) at III-V Lab led to the production of 20 mu m pitch, mid-format and full TV-format LWIR starring arrays with excellent performances, uniformity and stability. At the present time III-V Lab, together with TOL (Thales Optronics Ltd.) and SOFRADIR (Societe Francaise de Detecteurs Infrarouges), work on the demonstration of a 20 mu m pitch, 640 x 512 LWIR focal plane array (FPA) which detects the incident IR light polarization. Manufactured objects present a strong linear polarization signature in thermal emission. It is of high interest to achieve a detector able to measure precisely the degree of linear polarization, in order to distinguish artificial and natural objects in the observed scene. In this paper, we present a theoretical investigation of the optical coupling in polarization sensitive pixels. The QWIP modeling is performed by the Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method. The aim is to optimize the sensitivity to light polarization as well as the performance of the detector. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.