MOCVD Grown HgCdTe Heterostructures for Medium Wave Infrared Detectors

This paper presents the current status of medium-wave infrared (MWIR) detectors at the Military University of Technology’s Institute of Applied Physics and VIGO System S.A. The metal–organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) technique is a very convenient tool for the deposition of HgCdTe epilayers, with a wide range of compositions, used for uncooled infrared detectors. Good compositional and thickness uniformity was achieved on epilayers grown on 2-in-diameter, low-cost (100) GaAs wafers. Most growth was performed on substrates, which were misoriented from (100) by between 2° and 4° in order to minimize growth defects. The large lattice mismatch between GaAs and HgCdTe required the usage of a CdTe buffer layer. The CdTe (111) B buffer layer growth was enforced by suitable nucleation procedure, based on (100) GaAs substrate annealing in a Te-rich atmosphere prior to the buffer deposition. Secondary-ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) showed that ethyl iodide (EI) and tris(dimethylamino)arsenic (TDMAAs) were stable donor and acceptor dopants, respectively. Fully doped (111) HgCdTe heterostructures were grown in order to investigate the devices’ performance in the 3–5 µm infrared band. The uniqueness of the presented technology manifests in a lack of the necessity of time-consuming and troublesome ex situ annealing.