Antimonide based infrared detectors: understanding band-structures and engineering band-diagrams (Conference Presentation)

There has been significant advancement in 6.1 A InAs/GaSb/AlSb type II superlattices in the past decade due to significant investments by the department of defense for applications in infrared detectors and focal plane arrays. One of the advantages of the antimonide system is the large variety of materials options (bulk/Ga-bearing, Ga-free, binary/ternary superlattices) and the various device architectures enabled by designer offsets. However these degrees of freedom require careful trade-off balancing performance and complexity. In this talk, I will describe some of the physics of the superlattices including the various techniques to engineer the band structure using quantum confinement. I will then discuss some of the approaches to engineer band-diagrams in this system to achieve high performance detectors. Finally, I will describe our efforts to break the conventional trade-off between signal, noise and speed using architectures involving dielectric resonators coupled with deep sub-wavelength detectors and novel integration schemes with read-out integrated circuits.