Electromagnetic modeling and resonant detectors and arrays

• Developed an electromagnetic model to calculate quantum efficiency quantitatively.
• Design an efficient photon trap, and observed QE as high as 71%.
• Demonstrated the R-QWIP in FPAs and achieved QE in the range of 30–40%.
• Designed detectors for gas sensing, high-speed detection, and dual-band detection.

We recently developed a finite element three-dimensional electromagnetic model for quantum efficiency (QE) computation. It is applicable to any arbitrary detector geometry and materials. Using this model, we can accurately account for the open literature experimental results that we have investigated, which include those from GaAs solar cells, GaSb type-II superlattices, and GaAs quantum wells. We applied the model to design a photon trap to increase detector QE. By accumulating and storing incident light in the resonator-QWIP structure, we observed experimental QE as high as 71%. This improvement shows that we are now able to fully determine the optical properties of QWIPs. For example, we can design QWIPs to detect at certain wavelengths with certain bandwidths. To illustrate this capability, we designed QWIPs with its QE spectrum matching well with the transmission spectrum of a medium. We subsequently produced several focal plane arrays according to these designs with 640 × 512 and 1 K × 1 K formats. In this paper, we will compare the modeled QE and the experimental results obtained from single detectors as well as FPAs.