Quantum well infrared photodetectors hardiness to the nonideality of the energy band profile

Emmanuel Lhuillier (1, 2) , Nicolas Péré-Laperne (3) , Isabelle Ribet-Mohamed (1) , Emmanuel Rosencher (4) , Gilles Patriarche (3) , Amandine Buffaz (2) , Vincent Berger (2) , Alexandru Nedelcu (5) , Mathieu Carras (5)

1 ONERA - The French Aerospace Lab [Palaiseau]
2 MPQ (UMR_7162) - Laboratoire Matériaux et Phénomènes Quantiques
3 LPN - Laboratoire de photonique et de nanostructures
4 ONERA - The French Aerospace Lab [Châtillon]
5 III-V Lab - Alcatel-Thales III-V Lab

We report results on the effect of a nonsharp and disordered potential in quantum well infrared photodetectors QWIP. Scanning electronic transmission microscopy is used to measure the alloy profile of the structure which is shown to present a gradient of composition along the growth axis. Those measurements are used as inputs to quantify the effect on the detector performance peak wavelength, spectral broadening, and dark current. The influence of the random positioning of the doping is also studied. Finally we demonstrate that QWIP properties are quite robust with regard to the nonideality of the energy band profile.

Domaines: Matière Condensée [cond-mat]

Emmanuel Lhuillier, Nicolas Péré-Laperne, Isabelle Ribet-Mohamed, Emmanuel Rosencher, Gilles Patriarche, et al.. Quantum well infrared photodetectors hardiness to the nonideality of the energy band profile. Journal of Applied Physics, 2010, 107, pp.123110 - 123110. ⟨10.1063/1.3446093⟩. ⟨hal-01438640⟩