MINIMALLY COOLED HETEROJUNCTION LASER HETERODYNE DETECTORS IN METALORGANIC VAPOR-PHASE EPITAXIALLY GROWN HG1-XCDXTE

By taking advantage of Auger suppression techniques, the leakage curre nts of room temperature infrared detectors operating in the LWIR band can be greatly reduced. At present, these detectors suffer from large 1/f noise and hence the improvement in the detectivity resulting from the reduced leakage currents can only be realized at high frequencies. However, this is not a problem for heterodyne systems which employ in termediate frequencies above 40 MHz. A thermo-electrically cooled Auge r suppressed infrared detector operated at 260K has been studied as a heterodyne detector. The device was operated with the application of s ufficient local oscillator power to double its dark current (about 0.3 mW) and a NEP of 2 x 10(-19) W Hz(-1) was deduced from heterodyne mea surements. The frequency response is presently limited by a combinatio n of the detector capacitance and the series resistance to about 70 MH z and ways to reduce this series resistance are considered.