Sensitive Infrared Photodetectors: Optimized Electron Kinetics for Room-Temperature Operation

Abstract

The research focused on design of room-temperature detectors based on advanced quantum dot (QD) nanostructures with optimized photoelectron kinetics. It has been demonstrated that potential barriers around QDs and/or QD clusters significantly increase the photoelectron lifetime and improve the device responsivity, photoconductive gain, and sensitivity. Combining QD nanoblocks with various positions of dopants it is possible to create unique distribution of potential profile, which forces photoelectrons to move in the designated areas and to avoid QDs. Changing the electron occupation of QDs one can manage the barriers and control the photoelectron motion. The proposed, designed, and investigated advanced QD structures have a set of characteristics making them especially suitable for IR: (i) Manageable kinetics, which allows for tuning the photocarrier lifetime to control basic sensor characteristics, such as operating time, responsivity, and detectivity; (ii) Tunable highly-selective coupling to radiation; (iii) High photoconductive gain and responsivity; (iv) Low generation-recombination noise due to the long photoelectron lifetime.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 20, 2010
Accession Number
ADA563729

Entities

People

  • Andrei Sergeyev
  • Vladimir Mitin

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Band Structures
  • Detectors
  • Electric Fields
  • Electron Capture
  • Electron Energy
  • Electronics
  • Electrons
  • Energy
  • Infrared Detectors
  • Nanotechnology
  • Optoelectronic Devices
  • Photodetectors
  • Quantum Dots
  • Relaxation Time
  • Scattering
  • Semiconductors
  • Three Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Materials science

Readers

  • Quantum Dot Semiconductor Device Photonics and Graphene Optoelectronic Materials and THz Physics.

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics
  • Quantum Computing