High performance HgCdTe-detectors grown by molecular beam epitaxy

Molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) offers benefits such as the capability for growth of compositionally-tailored heterostructures and in-situ doping of HgCdTe alloys. These capabilities were applied to the growth of long wave infrared unispectral focal plane arrays (FPA) with 480 x 4 elements. The detectivity (D*) map of the FPA demonstrated performance that was higher than the specification value, with no defective channels. Two-color detectors with the n-p-n architecture, for the simultaneous detection of two closely spaced bands in the midwave infrared spectrum were also grown by MBE. These devices exhibited sharp turn-off and turn-on in both bands. The quantum efficiency was greater than 70% and average R(o)A values exceeded 1 x 10(6) Omega-cm(2) in both bands. These result demonstrate that high performance HgCdTe devices can be grown by MBE.