Status of very long infrared-wave focal plane array development at DEFIR

The very long infrared wavelength (>14μm) is a very challenging range for the design of large HgCdTe focal plane arrays. As the wavelength gets longer (ie the semiconductor gap gets smaller), the physic of photodiodes asks for numerous technological improvements to keep a high level of detection performance. DEFIR (LETI-Sofradir common research team) has been highly active in this field during the last few years. The need (mainly expressed by the space industry ESA and CNES) of very long wave focal plane arrays appears very demanding in terms of dark current, defect density and of course quantum efficiency. This paper aims at presenting a status of long and very long wave focal plane array development at DEFIR for three different ion implanted technologies: n on p mercury vacancies doped technology, n on p extrinsic doped technology, and p on n arsenic on indium technology. Special focus is done to 15μm cut off n/p focal plane array fabricated in our laboratory demonstrating high uniformity, diffusion and shot noise limited photodiodes at 50K.