Recent developments of high-complexity HgCdTe focal plane arrays at leti infrared laboratory

Abstract

In this article, we present recent developments of the research in France at LETI infrared laboratory in the field of complex third-generation HgCdTe IRCMOS focal plane arrays (FPAs). We illustrate this with three prototypes of FPAs made at LETI, which have involved some technological improvements from the standard process today in production at Sofradir. We present, using molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) growth, a 128 × 128 dual-band infrared (photodetector)-complementary metal oxide semiconductor (IRCMOS) with a pitch of 50 µm operating within 2–5 µm. Using the more conventional liquid-phase epitaxy (LPE) growth, we show a new generation of high-performance long linear arrays (1500 × 2; pitch, 30 µm) operating in medium-wavelength infrared (MWIR) or long-wavelength infrared (LWIR) bands based on a modular architecture of butted HgCdTe detection circuit and SiCMOS multiplexers. Finally, we present for the first time a megapixel (1000 × 1000) FPA with a pitch of 15 µm operating in the MWIR band that exhibits a very high performance and pixel operability.