Principal component analysis of non-uniformity in electrical characteristics of HgCdTe photodiode arrays

• Presented a theoretical approach of modeling non-uniformity in HgCdTe Photo-diode arrays.
• Identification of characteristic signatures in dynamic resistance–voltage characteristics and its derivative characteristics.
• Correlation and sensitivity analysis of the signature parameters with the input/design physical parameters.
• Principal component analysis to identify the root cause of underlying non-uniformity.

We present a method of analyzing the non-uniformity in electrical characteristics of HgCdTe photodiode arrays for infrared imaging applications. We have selected dynamic resistance–voltage (R–V) characteristics for analyzing electrical behavior of HgCdTe photodiodes because the dynamic resistance at a given operating voltage directly governs the imager performance and being derivative of current–voltage (I–V) characteristics, it has little impact of the constant shifts due to stray illumination during dark measurements, relaxing the stringent requirement of perfect dark conditions to some extent for performance analysis. We have demonstrated that by using statistical analysis such as correlation of the selected signatures and their principal component analysis, we can identify the root cause of the high non-uniformity among sensor pixels in the array. The method has been implemented using theoretical I–V model of MWIR HgCdTe photodiodes, but it is generic and may be implemented on any other types of diode arrays for theoretical or experimental analysis of their non-uniformity.