Radiation damage and mitigation by minority carrier injection in GaSb/InAs and InAsSb/AlAsSb heterojunction barrier infrared detectors

Effects of gamma and proton irradiation, and of forward bias minority carrier injection, on minority carrier diffusion and photoresponse were investigated for long-wave (LW) and mid-wave (MW) infrared detectors with engineered majority-carrier barriers. The LWIR detector was a type-II GaSb/InAs strained-layer superlattice pBiBn structure. The MWIR detector was a InAsSb/AlAsSb nBp structure without superlattices. Room temperature gamma irradiations degraded the minority carrier diffusion length of the LWIR structure, and minority carrier injections caused dramatic improvements, though there was little effect from either treatment on photoresponse. For the MWIR detector, effects of room temperature gamma irradiation and injection on minority carrier diffusion and photoresponse were negligible. Subsequently, both types of detectors were subjected to gamma irradiation at 77 K. In-situ photoresponse was unchanged for the LWIR detectors, while that for the MWIR ones decreased 19% after cumulative dose of similar to 500 krad(Si). Minority carrier injection had no effect on photoresponse for either. The LWIR detector was then subjected to 4 Mrad(Si) of 30 MeV proton irradiation at 77 K, and showed a 35% decrease in photoresponse, but again no effect from forward bias injection. These results suggest that photoresponse of the LWIR detectors is not limited by minority carrier diffusion.