Qwip Infrared Detector Production Line Results

Since 1997, Sofradir has been working with Thales Research & Technologies (TRT) to develop and produce Quantum Well Infrared Photodetectors (QWIP) as a complementary offer with Mercury Cadmium Telluride (MCT) Long Wave (LW) detectors, to provide large LW staring arrays. Thanks to the low dark current technology developed by TRT, the QWIP detectors can be operated at FPA temperature above 73K, enabling the production of compact Infrared (IR) cameras thanks to the use of compact microcoolers. The TV/2 VEGA-LW detector (25μm pitch 384×288 Integrated Detector Dewar Assembly (IDDCA)) is integrated in the Catherine-XP thermal imager from Thales Optronique SA (TOSA). To date, more than one thousand units have been manufactured. The TV SIRIUS-LW detector (20μm pitch 640×512 IDDCA) is integrated in the Catherine-MP thermal imager from Thales Optronics Ltd. (TOL). To date, several hundreds of units have been manufactured. We will discuss in this paper statistical results of these productions and our latest reliability study results, which highlight the stability of the TRT QWIP technology. Thanks to this mature technology, TRT and Sofradir have been able to increase the QWIP wafer size from 3 inches to 4 inches, without any impact on yields and FPA performances. A dual-band Mid Wave-Long Wave (MW-LW) QWIP detector (25μm pitch 384×288 IDDCA) is currently under development. We will present in this paper its latest results.