Quantum Well Infrared Detectors Wan-Ching Hung, Jie Zhang Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, 14627-0231 zhangj@ece.rochester.edu Abstract: Quantum well infrared photodetectors (QWIP) have been developed very quickly over the past twenty years and large format focal plane arrays (FPA) with low noise equivalent temperature differences (NETD), high uniformity and operability have been achieved. In this paper, we make brief comparison of QWIPs with HgCdTe (MCT) detectors. Basic device physics and structures, characteristics, performance and benefits of QWIPs were demonstrated. The state-of-the-art of the QWIP FPA technology and its application were presented. © Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering I. INTRODUCTION Infrared (IR) radiation is electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength longer than that of visible light, shorter than that of radio wave. It spans three orders of magnitude and has wavelengths between approximately 750 nm and 1 mm. IR detector technologies are very important nowadays both in military and civilian applications and have been widely investigated over the past century. Commercial applications of IR FPAs could cover astronomy, art history and archaeology, biological and medical systems, spectroscopy, fire control, surveillance and driver’s vision enhancement. The military applications could include night vision, rifle sight, surveillance, missile guidance, tracking, and interceptors. Fig 1 shows the atmosphere transmittance in the IR region which indicates the prospect applications in the astronomy, communication and military. [1-5] Fig. 1 Plot of atmospheric transmittance in the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum [6] In this paper, we focus on devices which involve IR excitation of carriers in quantum wells. A distinguishing feature of QW infrared detectors is that they can be implemented in chemically stable wide-band-gap materials as a result of the use of intersubband (intraband) processes. Till now, different types of quantum well infrared detectors have been achieved, among which, the technology of GaAs/AlGaAs multiple quantum well (MQW) detectors is the most mature. Rapid progress has been made recently in the performance of these detectors. Infrared focal plane arrays with high sensitivity, high uniformity, large format, and flexible wavelength are fabricated. Based on the high requirement in surveillance sensors and interceptor seekers, quantum well infrared photodetectors (QWIP) focal plane arrays (FPA) with lattice matched GaAs/AlGaAs material system which can provide high uniform, multicolor and long-wavelength operation is currently a hot topic in the worldwide. Here, the characteristics, performance and benefits of QWIP are demonstrated and discussed. The basic device physics and detector design of QWIP structures are given. The stability, reproducibility, yield, cost, maintenance, and manufacturability are also very important issues. II. HISTORY: Overview of current IR detectors The first IR photoconductor was developed by Case in 1917. Since then, many materials have been investigated in the IR field. Observing the IR detector technology development history, a simple theorem can be stated: All physics phenomena in the range of about 0.1-1 eV can be proposed for IR detectors. Among these effects are: change in electrical conductivity (bolometers), gas expansion (Golay cell), pyroelectricity (pyroelectric detectors), photon drag, Josephson effect (Josephson junctions, SQUIDs), internal emission (PtSi Schottky barriers), fundamental absorption (intrinsic photodetectors), impurity absorption (extrinsic photodetectors), low dimensional solids [superlattice (SL) and quantum well (QW) detectors], different type of phase transitions, etc. Since the initial proposal by Esaki and Tsu and the advent of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), interest in semiconductor superlattices (SL’s) and quantum well (QW) structures has increased continuously over the years. As a result, a new class of materials and heterojunctions with unique electronics and optical properties has been developed. Fig. 2 History of the development of IR detectors [3] Fig. 2 gives approximate dates of significant development efforts for the materials mentioned. The modern IR detector technology started from the World War II. Till recently, photon IR detector technology combined with semiconductor material science, photolithography technology developed for integrated circuits and research progress in optical engineering have propelled extremely advances in IR capabilities in just a fraction of the last century. Current cooled IR detector systems use material systems, such as HgCdTe (MCT), InSb, PtSi, and doped Si. The quantum well infrared photodetector is a relatively new technology for IR sensor applications. Among these cooled IR detector systems, PtSi FPAs are highly uniform and manufacturable, but have very low quantum efficiency and can only operate in the MWIR range. The InSb FPA technology is mature with very high sensitivity, but it also can only operate in the MWIR range. Neither PtSi nor InSb IR detectors have wavelength tunabiligty or multicolor capabilities. Doped silicon has a wide spectral bandwidth from 0.8 to 30 um, with no wavelength tenability or multicolor capability, and it can only operate at very low temperature (around 12 K). Both MCT and QWIPs offer high sensitivity with wavelength flexibility in the middle-wavelength infrared (MWIR), long-wavelength infrared (LWIR) and very-long-wavelenth infrared (VLWIR) regions, as well as multicolor capabilities. Table 1. Comparison of infrared detectors [2] Detector type Thermal (thermopile, bolometers, pyroelectric) Intrinsic IV-VI (PbS, PbSe, PbSnTe) II-VI (HgCdTe) III-V (InGaAs, InAs, InSb, InAsSb) Advantages Light, rugged, reliable, and low cost Room temperature operation Easier to prepare More stable materials Easy band gap tailoring Well developed theory & expiment Multicolor detectors Good material and dopants Advanced technology Possible monolithic integration Photon Extrinsic (Si:Ca, Si:As, Ge:Cu, Ge:Hg) Free carriers (PtSi, Pt2Si, IrSi) Type I (GaAs/AlGaAs, InGaAs/AlGaAs) Quantum Wells Type II (InAs/InGaSb, InAs/InAsSb) Quantum dots InAs/GaAs, InGaAs/InGaP, Ge/Si Very-long-wavelength operation Relatively simple technology Low-cost, high yields Large and close-packed 2D arrays Matured material growth Good uniformity over large area Multicolor detectors Low Auger recombination rate Easy wavelength control Normal incidence of light Low thermal generation Disadvantages Low detectivity at high frequncey Slow response (ms order) Very high thermal expansion coefficient, Large permittivity Nonuniformity over large area High cost in growth and processing Surface instability Heteroepitaxy with large Lattice mismatch Long wavelength cutoff limited To 7 um (at 77K) High thermal generation Extremely low-temperature operation Low quantum efficiency Low-temperature operation High thermal generation Complicated design and growth Complicated design and growth Sensitive to the interfaces Complicated design and growth HCdTe (MCT) is a variable-gap semiconductor most often used in the production of IR photodetectors. It is nearly the most perfect IR detector material in terms of fundamental properties. But, since the conventional interband optical absorption involves photoexciting acrriers across the band gap Eg, i.e., promoting an electron to jump from the valence band to the conduction band. These photocarriers are then collected, in order to produce a photocurrent. This process is comparatively simpler in the visible light or ultra violet light spectrum ranges. However, for an infrared radiation whose wavelength ranges from 0.1 um to about 100 um, it requires an extremely small band gap which is in the order of 100 meV. Such small-band-gap materials are well known to be more difficult to grow, process, and fabricate into devices than are larger-band-gap semiconductors. In addition, the week Hg-Te band resulting in bulk, surface, and interface instabilities as well as the uniformity and yield are still unresolved issues. These difficulties thus motivate the study of novel artificial low effective band-gap materials which use quantum wells in large-band-gap (Eg>1 eV) semiconductors. [7] III. DEVICE PHYSICS & CHARACTERISTICS The QWIP is a semiconductor device using intersubband transitions within either the conduction band (n-type) or the valence band (p-type). The quantum well is formed by using an ultra thin layer of narrow band gap semiconductor (e.g. GaAs) sandwiched between two thin wider band gap semiconductors (e.g. AlGaAs) barrier layers. The motion of the charge carriers perpendicular to the layers becomes quantized so that localized two-dimensional (2-D) subbands of quantized states are formed inside the quantum well. When an optical beam is incident with an angle to the QWIP surface, an electron in the ground state of the quantum well absorbs an infrared photon and excites to a higher state during an intersubband optical transition. A typical GaAs/AlGaAs QWIP consists of 30-50 quantum well periods. Using GaAs as the well region and AlGaAs as the barrier region, confined quantum well structures can be formed when the well width is small (less than an electron’s de Broglie wavelength). The thickness of the GaAs layer determines the well width, and the x value in AlxGa1-xAs determines the barrier height. The well region has one bound ground state and one or more excited states, depending on the barrier structure. A. Classification Fig. 3 Energy Band Diagram for the type-I, type-II staggered, type-II misaligned, and type-III. [8] A majority of the studies on quantum well infrared photodetectors (QWIPs) have been focused on GaAs/AlGaAs. However, other material such as n-type InGaAs/InAlAs, GaAs/GaInP, InGaAsP/InP, type II AlAs/Al0.5Ga0.5As, and SiGe/Si have also been investigated for QWIPs applications. In general, the hetero-interface quantum well structures may be classified into four categories: type-I, type-II staggered, type-II misaligned, and type-III, as shown in Fig. 3 Fig. 3 Type-I is the most used structure for QWIPs, which maybe fabricated from n-type GaAs/AlGaAs, InGaAs/InAlAs, GaSb/AlSb, GaAs/GaInP material. In a type-II quantum well structure, electrons and holes are confined in different semiconductor layers at their heterojunctions and super lattices. The type-III QWIPs involve the use of a zero band gap material such as HgCdTe. B. Working principle (1) Intersubband absorption Fig. 4 is a typical figure for single well of type I. For instance, the low-band-gap material in the quantum well is GaAs and the high-band-gap material is AlGaAs. The intersubband transition energy 3 2 2 between the lowest and first excited state is E 2 E1 2m * L2w (1) where Lw is the width of the quantum well, m* is the effective mass in the well. Fig. 4 Band structure of quantum-well (depths Ec, and Ev. Intersubband absorption between electron levels E, and E2 or hole levels HI to H2 is schematically shown. [1] Furthermore this transition has a large dipole matrix element (z) = 16L/92~0.18 L, and an integrated absorption strength of c N w hf a(v)dv 4 m*cn 0 r o sin 2 ' cos ' Where c=NDLW is the two-dimensional density of carriers in the well, ND is the three-dimensional carrier density, LW is the number of doped well, nr is the index of refraction, θ’ is the angle between the direction of the optical beam and the surface normal, and f is the oscillator strength. This oscillator strength is very large and is given for this quantum well with infinitely high barriers as f 2m* ( E2 E1 ) z 2 0.96 2 (where z is the direction normal to the quantum well). By changing the quantum-well width L, this Intersubband transition energy can be varied over a wide range from the short wave infrared SWIR (A-2 pm), the medium wave infrared MWIR (n-4 pm>, through long-wave LWIR (n-10 pm) and into the very long-wave VWIR spectral regions (A > 14 pm). Since the oscillator strength only has a component along z, the optical electric field must also have a component parallel to z in order to induce an intersubband absorption; thus, normal incidence radiation will not be absorbed. Based on the above limitation, several optical coupling methods are adopted, such as gratings, random scattering and microlenses. (2) Sequential resonant tunneling Consider the application of electric fields to a multiquantum-well structure, and the tunneling escape and subsequent transport of these photoexcited electrons. The infrared absorption due to the intersubband transition from the bound ground state to the bound excited state is followed by the photoexcited electrons tunneling out of the well (as shown in Fig. 5). These photocarriers, which escape from the well, are transported by the electric field in the continuum above the barriers for an excited-state lifetime τL during which they travel a distance L (which is the mean free path for recapture back into the quantum wells) and thereby produce a photocurrent. The total current I can be written as I=Ist+Ith+Ipt, where Ist is the sequential resonant tunneling contribution, Ith is due to thermionic emission, and Ipt is phonon assisted tunneling. In principle, due to the two-dimensional (2D) nature of the electron gas in the well, resonant tunneling is possible only when the energy levels in each well coincide. The presence of acoustic phonons and impurity scattering within each well, conservation of energy and momentum is possible provided that eV p 2 , where Vp is the potential difference per period between the adjacent wells and τ 1 is the ground-state scattering time. Therefore, at small bias the electrons are able to conduct by ground-state resonant tunneling through the ground states of each well. At high bias, eV p 2 , ground-state resonant tunneling is not possible and as a result negative differential resistance occurs. As each period breaks off from the resonant condition, the resistance across this period becomes much larger and a high-field domain forms. Any subsequent increase in the bias will appear across this domain until the ground level rises to within 2 E2 in the next well whereupon the resonant tunneling condition is restored. of the first excited level (3)Bound-to-bound State All QWIPs are based on ‘‘band gap engineering’’ of layered structures of wide-band-gap (relative to thermal IR energies) materials. These structures are designed in such a way that the energy separation between two selected states in the structure matches the energy of the infrared photons to be detected. By using different well widths and barrier heights, several QWIP configurations have been reported based on transitions from bound-to-bound, bound-to-continuum states, bound-to-quasibound states, and bound-to-miniband states. Fig. 5 Schematic energy band diagram [9] For Fig. 5 (a) after absorption of the infrared photon, the photoexcited carrier can either be transported along the quantum well direction (with an applied parallel bias voltage), or perpendicular to the wells (with an applied field along the growth direction). However, as far as detection is concerned, perpendicular transport is superior to parallel transporting since the difference between the excited-state and ground-state mobilities is much larger in the latter case, and thus the photo response is substantially greater. The photocurrent from this detector arises solely from the high-field domain, since only from this region can the photoexcited carriers tunnel out of the well and escape. But the escape probability by tunneling is not high due to the confinement of the excited level. We can thus express the photocurrent Ip as I p n p ev (2) where np is the number of photo generated carriers/cm3 and v is the transport velocity along the super lattice. Furthermore, the dark current is much lower since the heterobarriers effectively block the transport of the carriers in the doped quantum-well ground state. For this reason QWIPs based on the escape and perpendicular transport of photoexcited carriers are to be preferred. (4)Bound-to-Continuum State By decreasing the size of the quantum well, the strong oscillator strength of the excited bound state can be pushed up into the continuum resulting in a strong bound-to-continuum state absorption. This extended state structure has the major advantage that the photoexcited electron can escape from the quantum well without tunneling through the energy barrier. Thus, the bias voltage required for the photoelectron to efficiently escape from the well can be dramatically reduced, strongly lowering the dark current. In addition, the barrier thickness can now be substantially increased thereby further reducing the ground-state sequential tunneling by many orders of magnitude. C. Characteristics and performance (1) Quantum efficiency η Fig. 6. Quantum efficiency versus wavelength for a HgCdTe photodiode and GaAs/AlGaAs QWIP detector with similar cutoffs. [2] The quantum efficiency value describes how well the detector is coupled to the radiation to be detected. It is usually defined as the number of electron-hole pairs generated per incident photon. Due to the intersubband transition in the conduction band, the n-typed QWIP detection mechanism requires photons with a non-normal angle of incidence to provide proper polarization for photon absorption. The absorption quantum efficiency of QWIP is relatively small with a 2D grating. Fig. 6 compares the spectral η of a HgCdTe photodiode to that of a QWIP. A higher bias voltage is used to boost η. However, an increase in the reverse bias voltage also causes an increase of the leakage current. This limits any potential improvement in the system performance. New grating designs are under study to improve η, such as an enhanced QWIP, antenna gratings, and corrugated gratings. [10, 11] It is well known that using a smaller number of quantum wells and bound-to-continuum structures, increased optical gain and improved detector performance at low temperatures are possible. Tidrow presented [12] a high performance QWIP consisting of only three quantum wells with the conversion efficiencies up to 29% at a bias voltage of 20.8 V and a peak wavelength of 8.5 mm. (2) Dark current In ideal photodiodes the diffusion current is dominant, therefore their leakage current is very low and insensitive to the detector bias. Leakage current is the primary contribution of unwanted noise. Figure 7 shows the I–V characteristics for temperatures ranging from 35 to 77 K, measured in a device at the 9.6-mm spectral peak. It shows typical operation at 2 V applied bias in the slowly varying region of current with bias between the initial rise in current at low voltage and the later rise at high bias. Typical LWIR QWIP dark current is about 10-4 A/cm2 at 77 K. Thus, the same current in a 24×24 µm2 pixel will be in the nanoampere range. In comparison with other photodiodes, the behavior of dark current of QWIP’s is understood better. At low temperatures (T<40 K, λc=10 µm), the dark current is mostly caused by defect-related direct tunneling. In the medium operating range between 40 and 70 K (λ c =10 µm), thermally assisted tunneling dominates. In this case, electrons are thermally excited and tunnel through the barriers with assistance from defects and the triangle part of the barrier at high bias. FIG. 7. Current-voltage characteristics of a QWIP detector having a peak response of 9.6 mm at various temperatures, along with the 300 K background window current measured at 30 K with an 180° FOV. [2] (3) Detectivity Figure 8 compares the detectivities of p-on-n HgCdTe photodiodes with those of GaAs/AlGaAs QWIP’s. The theoretical curves corresponding to HgCdTe photodiodes are calculated on the assumption of constant cutoff wavelengths of 10 µm and 11 µm. The VLWIR results for HgCdTe ~14.8 µm at 80 K and 16.2 µm at 40 K! and QWIP at 16 µm show the intrinsic superiority of HgCdTe photodiodes. The detectivity of HgCdTe is roughly an order of magnitude higher, though the advantage decreases as the temperature is reduced. The best example of a region where QWIP’s could have a performance advantage is low temperatures. As we can see from Fig. 8, the comparison of detectivity is more advantageous for GaAs/AlGaAs QWIP’s in the spectral region below 14 µm and at temperatures below 50 K. FIG. 8. LWIR detector detectivity versus temperature for GaAs/AlGaAs QWIP’s and p–on–n HgCdTe photodiodes. [2] IV. Focal plane array The combination of existing high-performance arrays and highly developed silicon integrated circuits in hybrid IR array/silicon planes have proved to be useful for thermal imaging systems with the thermal and spatial resolution unmatched by any competing technologies at present. In hybrid FPA’s, detectors and multiplexers are fabricated on different substrates and mated with each other by flip-chip bonding (as shown in Fig. 9). In this case the detector material and the multiplexer may be optimized independently. Other advantages of hybrid FPA’s are the near 100% fill factor and the increased signal-processing area on the multiplexer chip. The detector array can be illuminated either from the front side (with the photons passing through the transparent silicon multiplexer) or from the backside (with photons passing through the transparent detector array substrate). The relatively new QWIP technology has been developed very quickly in the last decade. Large-size LWIR GaAs/AlGaAs FPA’s with up to 640×480 (640×512) pixels have been demonstrated with excellent uniformity and operability. Fig. 9 Hybrid IR FPA interconnects technique between a detector array and silicon multiplexer: (a) indium bump technique, (b) loophole technique, and (c) scanning electronic microscopy photo FPA A. Uniformity & NEDT FPA uniformity influences the complexity of an IR system. Uniformity is important for accurate temperature measurements, background subtraction, and threshold testing. The admissible nonuniformity depends on the requirements of the operability. The nonuniformity value is usually calculated using the standard deviation over the mean, counting the number of operable pixels in an array. FPA performance is uniformity limited and thus essentially independent of detectivity. An improvement in nonuniformity from 0.1% to 0.01% after correction could lower the NEDT from 63 to 6.3 mK. FPA uniformity influences the complexity of an IR system. Uniformity is important for accurate temperature measurements, background subtraction, and threshold testing. A typical uncorrected-response nonuniformity in QWIP FPA’s is 1%–3% with the operability (the fraction of good pixels) higher than 99.9%. For a 128×128 15-μm array fabricated by Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the uncorrected standard deviation is 2.4% and the corrected nonuniformity is 0.05%. For a large 640×486 9-μm FPA the uncorrected noise nonuniformity is about 6%, and after a two-point correction improves to an impressive 0.04%. [13] For an FPA of the the same format demonstrated by Lockheed Martin, operability higher than 99.98% was described. [14] It is very hard for HgCdTe to compete with QWIP’s in the area of high uniformity and operability of large-array formats, especially at low temperatures and in the VLWIR region. High uniformity and high operability, as shown in the above examples, demonstrate the maturity of GaAs growth and processing technology. Besides using nonuniformity to evaluate FPA’s performance, the other criterion is NEDT. This parameter represents the temperature change, for incident radiation, that gives an output signal equal to the rms noise level. The NEDT for QWIP is equal to NEDT 2kTB hc g Nw (3) where λ=(λ1+λ2)/2 is the average wavelength of the spectral band and g is the photoconductive gain. NEDT value for charge-limited HgCdTe photodiodes can be determined by equation NEDT 2kTB (4) hc 2w If one assumes a typical storage capacity of 2×107 electrons, λ= 10 μm, TB =300 K, and g=0.4, The value of Eq (3) NEDT of 19.8 mK. The value of Eq (4) is 17.7mK. Thus, a low photoconductive gain actually increases the S/N ratio and a QWIP FPA can have a better NEDT than an HgCdTe FPA with a similar storage capacity. B. Fabrication Fig. 10 is the steps to fabricate a detector array. The first step is to grow the QWIP structure by MOVPE (Metal Organic Vapor Phase Epitaxy) starting with a semi-insulating GaAs wafer. A typical QWIP structure consists of 50 quantum wells, each of width 5.0 nm surrounded AlGaAs layers (x = 0.28) of width 35 nm. On either side of the QW structure is a contact layer consisting of highly n-doped GaAs. The next step is to lithographically define and etch a two dimensional grating into the uppermost part of the mesa. Then detector mesas are fabricated by etching down to the lower contact layer. Finally metal contacts are made and a layer of gold deposited over the grating. Fig. 10 Production steps of a QWIP array [21] 1. Epitaxial growth of QWIP structure 2. Processing of the QWIP array 3. Fabrication of ROIC (readout integrated circuit) 4. Processing of indium bumps 5. Hybridization flip-chip bonding 6. Mounting and wire bonding C. Cost The cost of a FPA depends strongly on the maturity of the technology and varies with the production quantity in different companies. In comparison with HgCdTe FPA’s, the industry has much less experience in QWIP FPA’s; therefore, improvements can be expected, especially since this technology is at an earlier stage of development. Because of the maturity of GaAs growth technology and the stability of the material system, no investment is needed for developing QWIP substrates, MBE growth, and processing technology. So far, more efforts have been put in the improvement of the device performance by means of tuning the device and gratings designs. It is estimated that the cost of the development QWIP technology and QWIP production will be much less than the other IR detecting systems. V. APPLICATIONS Since the initial demonstration of QWIP FPA’s in the late 1980s, there has been a worldwide sustained effort in developing the detector into a mainstream IR technology. So far, lots of efforts have been done to bring this technology into the commercial market and QWIP technology is accepted as the commercial standard for high-performance and large-format LWIR detection. Gunapala et al. [11] presented large-format QWIP cameras holding forth a promise for many applications in the 6–18 mm wavelength range in science, medicine, defense, and industry. Possible applications are medical imaging, firefighting, monitoring, IR astronomy, defense and surveillance. [15, 16, 17] VI. Conclusion The main drawback of LWIR QWIP FPA technology is that the device performance is limited to long integration time applications and low operation temperature. The main advantages are linked to the performance uniformity and to the easy fabrication of large size arrays due to the mature fabrication process of GaAs. Such large industrial infrastructure on III-V material/device growth, processing, and packaging gives QWIP’s a potential advantage in producibility and cost. QWIP FPAs using B-C, B-M and B-QB transition schems have been reported in the literature [18, 19, 20]. These QWIP FPAs have shown excellent imagery in the 8 – 12 um LWIR atmospheric spectral window. Till now, efforts in the area of QWIP technology have been limited to increase the operation temperature for tactical applications. In summary, QWIP technology has been developed very quickly in the past 12 years and impressive progress has been made with high performance, large format FPAs. QWIPs have special advantage for IR detection in VLWIR and multicolor detection. QWIP manufacturing leverages the rapidly evolving III-V GaAs industry and has the potential to be very low cost and give high production yield. Improvements are expected in device design and performance with continuing research and development effort. Acknowledgement Jie Zhang and Wan-Ching Hung would like to thank Professor Philippe M. Fauchet and all the ECE580 students for their help and support with our paper. Reference [1] B.F. Levine, “Quantum-well infrared photodetectors”, Journal of App Phy, 1993 [2] A. Rogalski, “Quantum well photoconductors in infrared technology”, Journal of App Phy, 2003 [3] A. Rogalski, “Infrared detectors: status and trends”, Process in Quantum Electronics, 27 (2003) 59-210 [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared [5] A. 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