학술논문

Negative luminescence from large-area HgCdTe photodiode arrays with 4.8-6.0-/spl mu/m cutoff wavelengths
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics IEEE J. Quantum Electron. Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of. 41(2):227-233 Feb, 2005
Subject
Engineered Materials, Dielectrics and Plasmas
Photonics and Electrooptics
Luminescence
Photodiodes
Temperature
Light emitting diodes
Charge carrier processes
Cooling
Current density
Absorption
Semiconductor diodes
Infrared (IR) light-emitting diode
midwave IR photodiode
negative luminescence (NL)
Language
ISSN
0018-9197
1558-1713
Abstract
We demonstrate the substantial suppression of infrared (IR) blackbody emission from HgCdTe photodiode arrays with cutoff wavelengths of 4.8, 5.5, and 6.0 /spl mu/m. At room temperature, a reverse bias induces internal negative luminescence (NL) efficiencies of 95%, 93%, and 88%, respectively, which correspond to apparent cooling of the surface temperatures by 60, 59, and 49 K. Reverse-bias saturation current densities for the three devices were 0.11, 0.7, and 32 A/cm/sup 2/. Measurement and analysis of the material transmission characteristics indicate that the small residual inefficiencies may be limited by a parasitic absorption process. The 4.8 and 5.5 /spl mu/m photodiodes were fabricated into 18 /spl times/ 2 arrays with total areas of 5 mm /spl times/ 5 mm. In both cases, all 36 array elements were fully operable, and had similar electrical and NL properties. Effective fill factors were /spl ap/100%, since carrier diffusion led to the extraction of carriers from regions between the elements. These results show that efficient, low-power NL devices with active areas in the square-inch range are now feasible for such applications as the cold shielding of infrared focal-plane arrays.