MCT by MBE on GaAs at AIM: state of the art and roadmap

In multiple publications over the last years, MCT MBE on GaAs has been shown to be a very versatile and promising material system and indeed may be the prime candidate among the alternative substrates for the fabrication of high-performance detectors across the whole IR composition range. In this paper we report on successful growth of MCT on GaAs over the composition range 0.2 < x(Cd) < 0.8. A single color MWIR 640 × 512, 15 μm pitch detector fabricated from this material with an operability of 99.71% at an operating temperature of 120 K is presented. In the LWIR region, an operability of 99.48% at 65 K has been achieved with a 1280 × 1024, 15 μm pitch detector. Finally we report on preliminary results of a dual-color 640 × 512, 20 μm pitch detector with cutoff wavelengths in the 3 - 4 and 4 - 5 μm range.