Numerical study of near-, mid-, and long-infrared photon trapping in crystalline and amorphous HgCdTe metamaterials

Abstract

Recently, mercury cadmium telluride (HgCdTe) films have been extensively studied for the metamaterial applications. Crystalline HgCdTe (c-HgCdTe) films attracted people’s attention for the spectral detection when used as metasurfaces and demonstrated reduced volume size, increased operating temperature, and improved quantum efficiency. Amorphous HgCdTe (a-HgCdTe) films also have been studied due to their interesting properties. Such properties include film deposition on any substrate, direct growth on device, and higher operating temperatures with the low dark current. Hence, in this work, for the first time, we investigate and compare the use of c-HgCdTe and a-HgCdTe for the photon sorting metasurfaces in near-, mid-, and long-IR spectral range in the sensor applications.