Competing technology for high-speed HOT-IR-FPAs

Recent efforts have been paid to elevate the operating temperature of Type II superlattice Mid Infrared photon detectors. Using M-structure superlattice, novel device architectures have been developed, resulting in significant improvement of the device performances. In this paper, we will compare different photodetector architectures and discuss the optimization scheme which leads to almost one order of magnitude of improvement to the electrical performance. At 150K, single element detectors exhibit a quantum efficiency above 50%, and a specific detectivity of 1.05x10¹² cm.Hz^1/2/W. BLIP operation with a 300K background and 2π FOV can be reached with an operating temperature up to 130K. High quality focal plane arrays were demonstrated with a noise equivalent temperature difference (NEDT) of 11mK up to 130K. Human body imaging is achieved at 165K with NEDT of 150mK.