MWIR APD Receivers

The objective of the program is to develop mid-wavelength infrared (MWIR) avalanche photodiode (APD) arrays for active and passive military sensing in the 3.0 – 4.6-μm waveband. With manufacturing development to improve material quality, APDs grown from a III-V material system, supported by commercial-scale growth and fabrication infrastructure, can meet the need for low-flux MWIR photon detectors with lower unit cost than the incumbent HgCdTe-based technology. The proposed Phase II program builds on our Phase I APD wafer growth experiments to improve wafer morphology, refine the APD layer design, fabricate arrays, and characterize the resulting detectors. The detector arrays manufactured in Phase II will be hybridized to an existing active imaging readout integrated circuit (ROIC) for demonstration, in existing camera electronics, to technology transfer partners.