Characteristics of MBE-grown heterostructure HgCdTe/CdTe/Si materials and planar photovoltaic devices

The recent developments in HgCdTe/CdTe/Si heterostructure materials and planar medium-wave infrared (MWIR) photovoltaic devices for IR imaging applications are discussed. The quality of the CdTe layers grown on different substrate orientations are compared. The HgCdTe grown on CdTe/Si is shown to be comparable with that of HgCdTe/CdZnTe. The I–V characteristics indicate the state-of-the-art performance of devices made on HgCdTe/Si.