Electromagnetic Modeling of Quantum Well Infrared Photodetectors

Author

Choi, Kwong-Kit ; Jhabvala, Murzy D. ; Forrai, David P. ; Waczynski, Augustyn ; Sun, Jason ; Jones, Robert

Author_Institution

U.S. Army Res. Labs., Adelphi, MD, USA

Volume

48

Issue

3

fYear

2012

fDate

3/1/2012 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

384

Lastpage

393

Abstract

Rigorous electromagnetic field modeling is applied to calculate the quantum efficiency of various quantum well infrared photodetector (QWIP) geometries. We found quantitative agreement between theory and experiment for corrugated-QWIPs, grating-coupled QWIPs, and enhanced-QWIPs, and the model explains adequately the spectral lineshapes of the quantum grid infrared photodetectors. After establishing our theoretical approach, we used the model to optimize the detector structures for 12-micron pixel pitch focal plane arrays.

Keywords

diffraction gratings; focal planes; infrared detectors; photodetectors; quantum well devices; semiconductor device models; electromagnetic modeling; enhanced QWIP; grating coupled QWIP; pixel pitch focal plane array; quantum efficiency; quantum well infrared photodetectors; rigorous electromagnetic field modeling; Atmospheric modeling; Coatings; Detectors; Geometry; Gold; Gratings; Materials; Electromagnetic field modeling; infrared detector; quantum efficiency;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9197

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JQE.2011.2175706

Filename

6095576