Engineering steps for optimizing high temperature LWIR HgCdTe photodiodes

The authors report on energy gap engineering solutions to improve the high-temperature performance of long-wave infrared (LWIR) HgCdTe photodiodes. Metalorganic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD) technology with a wide range of composition and donor/acceptor doping and without ex-situ post grown annealing seems to be an excellent tool for HgCdTe heterostructure epitaxial growth. The heterojunction HgCdTe photovoltaic device based on epitaxial graded gap structures integrated with Auger-suppression is a magnificent solution for high operating temperature (HOT) infrared detectors. The thickness, composition and doping of HgCdTe heterostructure were optimized with respect to photoelectrical parameters like dark current, the responsivity and the response time. In this paper we focus on graded interface abruptness in the progressive optimization.