A high-performance long wavelength superlattice complementary barrier infrared detector

We describe a long wavelength infrared detector where an InAs/GaSb superlattice absorber is surrounded by a pair of electron-blocking and hole-blocking unipolar barriers. A 9.9 μm cutoff device without antireflection coating based on this complementary barrier infrared detector design exhibits a responsivity of 1.5 A/W and a dark current density of 0.99×10−5 A/cm2 at 77 K under 0.2 V bias. The detector reaches 300 K background limited infrared photodetection (BLIP) operation at 87 K, with a black-body BLIP D∗ value of 1.1×1011 cm Hz1/2/W for f/2 optics under 0.2 V bias.