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IASI is an Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer devoted to the operational meteorology and to atmospheric studies and is to be installed on board the second ESA Polar Platform called METOP-1, planned to be launched in the year 2000. The main purpose of this high performance instrument is to record temperature and humidity profiles. The required lifetime is 4 years. This paper presents the characteristics of the LW IR detection arrays for the IASI spectrometer which consist of HgCdTe de- tectors. SAT has to develop the Engineering Model, Qualification Model and Fight Models of detectors, each having 4 pixels and AR-coated microlenses in a dedicated space housing equipped with a flexible line and a connector. An array is composed of HgCdTe photoconductive detectors. For this long wavelength the array is sensitive from 8.26 micrometers to 15.5 micrometers . The detectors, with sensitive areas of 900 x 900 micrometers 2, are 100 K operating with passive cooling. High quality HgCdTe material is a key feature for the manufacturing of high performance photoconductive detectors. Therefore epitaxial HgCdTe layers are used in this project. These epilayers are grown at CEA/LETI on lattice matched CdZnTe substrates, by Te-rich liquid phase epitaxy, based on a slider technique. The Cd content in the layer is carefully adjusted to meet the required cut off wavelength on the devices. After growth of the epilayers, the samples are annealed under Hg pressure in order to convert them into N type mate- rials. The electrical transport properties of the liquid phase epitaxied wafers are, at 100 K, mobility (mu) over 150,000 cm2/V.s and electrical concentration N of 1.5 1015 cm-3, the residual doping level being 1014 cm-3 at low temperature. On these materials the feasibility study of long wavelength HgCdTe photoconductors has been achieved with the following results: the responsivity is 330 V/W. The bias voltage is Vp=300 mV for a 4 mW limitation of power for each element. The resistance of an element is around 30 (Omega) .The detectivity is: D* at (lambda) pic (FOV, F, (Delta) F)=2x1010 cm HZ1/2W-1 and NEP=0.5 nW. Measurements are made under Earth observing flux corresponding to the conditions of the PPF sun-synchronous orbit.
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