High operating temperature n-on-p extrinsic MWIR HgCdTe photodiodes

Abstract

N-on-p extrinsically doped MWIR HgCdTe material and photodiodes have been developed to benefit from the expected reduction of the Auger generation in the p-type absorbing layer. Samples with two doping levels have been characterized using dark current, current noise, Hall effect and PhotoLuminescence Decay (PLD) measurements. The dark current and PLD measurements are consistent with a reduction of the Auger generation quantified by the ratio between the Auger 1 and 7 recombination coefficients 𝛾 around 10. The corresponding dark current in the sample with the lowest doping level was slightly higher than in typically p-on-n photodiodes. The low frequency noise, characterized by a Tobin coefficient below 10-5, is lower than the values reported for other MWIR HgCdTe photodiodes at the same dark current density. The low dark current and dark current noise show on the high potential of such photodiodes to form focal plane array that can be operated at high operating temperature without degradation of the image quality.