Temperature limitations for IR extrinsic and intrinsic photodetectors

Author

Sclar, Nathan

Author_Institution

Rockwell International, Anaheim, CA

Volume

27

Issue

1

fYear

1980

fDate

1/1/1980 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

109

Lastpage

118

Abstract

The temperature limitations for IR extrinsic and intrinsic photodetectors axe theoretically studied by comparing the detectivity limitations. This comparison indicates that the temperature superiority of the intrinsic detector is identified with the inequality $B_{E}/\\sigma _{E} > B_{I}/(\\alpha _{I}/\\sqrt {N_{C}N_{V}})$ where BE, BIare the respective recombination coefficients of the extrinsic and intrinsic detectors and σEand $\\alpha _{I}/\\sqrt {N_{C}N_{V}})$ are the respective optical absorption cross sections. The highest operational temperature for a given background radiation level for each species is established when the recombination coefficients are radiative limited. For the same spectral cutoff wavelength, refractive index and quantum efficiency, they will then have identical operational temperatures. Comparison with experiment shows that the intrinsic detectors achieve a closer approach (because of the inequality) to the theoretical limit than do the extrinsics. The prospects for achieving a closer approach to this limit with the extrinsics are discussed.

Keywords

Absorption; Bismuth; Impurities; Optical refraction; Photodetectors; Radiation detectors; Radiative recombination; Silicon; Spontaneous emission; Temperature;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9383

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/T-ED.1980.19828

Filename

1480621