ABSTRACT
Investigations of antimonide-based materials began at about the same time as HgCdTe—in the 1950s, and the apparent rapid success of their technology, especially low-dimensional solids, depends on the previous five decades of III-V material and device research. The sophisticated physics associated with the antimonide-based bandgap engineering concept started at the beginning of 1990s gave a new impact and interest in the development of infrared (IR) detector structures within academic and national laboratories. In addition, implementation of barriers in photoconductor structures, in so-called barrier detectors, prevents current flow in the majority carrier band of the detector’s absorber, but allows unimpeded flow in the minority carrier band. As a result, this concept resurrects the performance of antimonide-based focal plane arrays (FPAs) and gives a new perspective in their applications. Significant advances have been made in the bandgap engineering of various AIIIBV compound semiconductors that has led to new IR detector architectures. New emerging strategies include especially antimonide-based type-II superlattices (T2SLs), barrier structures such as nBn detector with lower generation-recombination (GR) leakage mechanisms, and multistage/cascade IR devices.
