STATUS OF MBE TECHNOLOGY FOR THE FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING OF HGCDTE FOCAL-PLANE ARRAYS

A robust process has been developed for the reproducible growth of in- situ doped Hg1-xCdxTe:As alloys by molecular beam epitaxy. Net hole co ncentrations in excess of 5 x 10(17) cm(-3), with peak mobilities >200 cm(2)/Vs were measured in Hg0.74Cd0.26Te:As films. The p-type layers were twin-free and consistently exhibit narrow x-ray rocking curves (< 40 arc sec). The reproducible growth of small lots of p-on-n LWIR dete ctor structures has been established. For a typical lot consisting of 13 layers, the average x-value of the n-type lease layer was 0.226 wit h a standard deviation of 0.003. The lateral compositional uniformity across a 2.5 cm x 2.5 cm wafer was x = +/-0.0006. High performance p-o n-n LWIR diodes were fabricated that exhibited R(0)A(0) values (0-fov at 78K) as large as 350 Omega cm(2) at 10.4 mu m.