Exploratory corrugated infrared hot-electron transistor arrays

An infrared hot-electron transistor (IHET) corrugated array with a common base configuration was investigated and fabricated. The IHET structure provides a maximum factor of six in improvement in the photocurrent to dark current ratio, and hence it improved the array S/N ratio by the same factor. The study also showed that there is no electrical cross-talk among individual detectors, even though they share the same emitter and base contacts. It thus paves the way to high density sensitive focal plane arrays.