Proceedings Article | 7 May 2009
Proc. SPIE. 7298, Infrared Technology and Applications XXXV
KEYWORDS: Staring arrays, Readout integrated circuits, Quantum wells, Sensors, Electrons, Quantum efficiency, Doping, Neodymium, Performance modeling, Quantum well infrared photodetectors
We are developing corrugated quantum well infrared photodetector (C-QWIP) technology for long wavelength
applications. A number of large format 1024 × 1024 C-QWIP focal plane arrays (FPAs) have been demonstrated. The
measured quantum efficiency η is ranging from 15 - 37%, depending on the detector type, doping density and number
of quantum wells in the detector material. The photoconductive gain is between 0.07 and 0.19, while the spectral width
is between 1.5 and 3.5 microns. Despite the large integrated η of the C-QWIPs, the number of collected photoelectrons
can be limited in shorter cutoff, small pixel FPAs under high speed operation. In this case, the read noise will have a
large impact on the system sensitivity. In this paper, we will discuss the detector model, the measured pixel
characteristics, and the effects of read noise on the FPA performance. Our analysis shows that the tolerable read noise
improves with the cutoff wavelength. For example, to achieve a sensitivity of 20 mK at 2 msec integration time, the
respective read noise will be 1000, 2000, 3000, and 4000 e¯ at λc = 8.8, 9.4, 10.7 and 11.7 μm. This analysis will help
to determine the read noise requirement for the C-QWIP FPAs.
