The effect of compressive strain on the performance of p-type quantum-well infrared photodetectors

A detailed study of the performance of compressively strained p-type III-V quantum-well infrared photodetectors (p-QWIPs) is presented in this work. Three device structures composed of InGaAs-GaAs, InGaAs-AlGaAs, and InGaAs-AlGaAs-GaAs for normal incidence absorption have been fabricated and analyzed, with the results being compared with similar reported unstrained p-QWIPs. In all three QWIP structures, the quantum-well layers are under biaxial compressive strain ranging from -0.8% to -2.8%, while the barrier layers are lattice-matched to the substrate. The detection peaks of the quantum-well infrared photodetectors ranged from 7.4 to 10.4 μm. The detectors utilized the bound-to-continuum, bound-to-quasi-bound, and step bound-to-miniband intersubband transitions for infrared detection. The results showed that responsivities of up to 90 mA/W and detectivities from 10⁹ to over 10¹⁰ cm√Hz/W are achieved under moderate applied bias and at reasonable operating temperatures (from 60 to 80 K), demonstrating the viability of the strained-layer p-doped quantum-well infrared photodetectors for staring focal plane array applications