ABSTRACT
Over the past 10-15 years, there has been significant interest in developing intersubband quantum well or quantum dot infrared photodetectors (QWIPs/QDIPs) for the mid-wave infrared (MWIR) and long-wave infrared (LWIR) regimes (Maimon et al. 1998, Chu et al. 1999, Rappaport et al. 2000, Chen et al. 2001, Liu et al. 2001b, Wang et al. 2001, Raghavan et al. 2002, Stiff-Roberts et al. 2002, Jiang et al. 2003). ™e 3-25 μm IR regime is of particular interest, due to its wide range of applications, including missile detection and tracking, battlefield imaging and communications, medical diagnostics and treatment, surveillance, and biological/chemical agent identification. Presently, mercury-cadmiumtelluride (MCT) detectors continue to demonstrate superior responsivity and specific-detectivity (D*) when compared to the state-of-the-art QDIPs or QWIPs. Despite their superior performance, difficulties in spatial uniformity, epitaxial growth, and low fabrication yields make the manufacture of large focal plane arrays (FPAs) exceedingly expensive (Sidorov et al. 1997, Phillips 2002). ™is fact drives scientists and engineers to try to make intersubband systems competitive.
