Laser fabrication of lead selenide infrared focal plane array devices

Abstract

The motivation of this work is to demonstrate the versatility and potential of laser processing in the fabrication of PbSe thin films and focal plane array devices. This work fabricates an FPA device with any need for the suite of equipment and chemicals necessary for photolithography and etching. Advances in laser technologies and the vast number of laser parameters available are enabling the huge potential for laser processing of thin films and device fabrication. This can be accomplished faster using lasers with fewer steps than using conventional thin film deposition and photolithography methods. This work presents the fabrication and simple operation of a proof-of-concept PbSe-based, 120-pixel PFA (10 × 12 pixel) focal plane array using only laser processing for film deposition and device patterning. Lasers were used to both deposition and pattern a PbSe film with 60 × 70 µm pixels with 100 µm pitch with a unit cell photoresponse of 17% DelR. Additional results, challenges, limitations, and suggested future improvements are presented.