Paper
31 January 2020 Ultra-sensitive SWIR FPA with enhanced quantum efficiency based on electron multi-injector
Simone Bianconi, Hooman Mohseni
Author Affiliations +
Abstract
By leveraging a three-dimensional device structure to decouple the optical and electronic areas of the detectors, Electron Injector (EI) technology has proven capable of surpassing the current performance of commercial short-wave infrared (SWIR) cameras. The improvement in sensitivity enabled by a nanoscale electronic area, however, comes at the cost of a decrease in quantum efficiency: the diffusion length of the minority carriers limits the area over which a photo-generated carrier can be collected at the small electron injector junction before recombining. This intrinsic limitation hinders the prospect of further improvements of the EI detector performance.

We here present a novel device architecture consisting of multiple nanoscale electron injectors connected to the same contact and constituting one individual pixel: by appropriate spacing of the injectors within the diffusion length of the photogenerated excess carriers, the fill factor of such multi-injector pixel can be considerably improved. The presented design was successfully implemented into an integrated FPA for SWIR imaging, showing excellent pixel yield, and a sensitivity of ~10 photons. While the high sensitivity is enabled by the small size of the 1μm injectors, the multi-injector design allows to achieve an area fill factor or ~20% of the 30x30μm pixel area, which is considerably higher than that of a single-injector design.

In summary, we demonstrate a highly sensitive SWIR FPA based on 1μm electron multi-injector design, which allows for a substantial improvement of the imager’s quantum efficiency and sensitivity.
© (2020) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Simone Bianconi and Hooman Mohseni "Ultra-sensitive SWIR FPA with enhanced quantum efficiency based on electron multi-injector", Proc. SPIE 11288, Quantum Sensing and Nano Electronics and Photonics XVII, 112882H (31 January 2020); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2546660
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KEYWORDS
Sensors

Quantum efficiency

Short wave infrared radiation

Staring arrays

Capacitance

Infrared sensors

Photodetectors

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