Impact of mercury vacancy states on Shockley–Read–Hall recombination in narrow gap HgCdTe

Abstract Technologically relevant narrow gap Hg 1-x Cd x Te is known to contain a considerable amount of mercury vacancies that supposedly degrade carrier lifetimes. Using semiclassical approach with no adjustable parameters, we calculate capture coefficients for acceptor states with different binding energy. Resulting Shockley–Read–Hall recombination times agree well with the experimental data and suggest that operating temperature of Hg 1-x Cd x Te detectors with ~ 20 µm cutoff can be elevated above 77 K.