Small HgCdTe infrared detector arrays from UWA

Single infrared detectors and small arrays find widespread applications in spectroscopy, radiometry, scanning imaging systems, target tracking etc. The technology of such devices based on mercury cadmium telluride (HgCdTe), the material of choice for high performance infrared detectors, has been a subject of intensive research in many countries. Projects conducted in this field at The University of Western Australia resulted in the development of a technology that allows the fabrication of state of the art photovoltaic infrared detectors with n- on p-junctions obtained by plasma induced type conversion using reactive ion etching (RIE). Using this technology, small arrays have been fabricated, flip chip bonded to readout/fanout, packaged and tested. The arrays comprised of 8 × 8 photodiodes with 50 μm × 50 μm size and 100 μm pitch, passivated with thermally evaporated CdTe/ZnS double layer. The best arrays are 100% operational and highly uniform. In this paper properties of these detector arrays are presented and analysed.