Dissipative Quantum Transport Study of A Bi-Layer Graphene-CdTe-HgCdTe Heterostructure for MWIR Photodetector

Recent experimental investigations in Bi-Layer Graphene (BLG) have shown interesting and useful electrical behavior that can be leveraged in building novel device applications. One such behavior being carrier multiplication effects within the BLG. We propose to use a heterostructure of BLG-CdTe-HgCdTe as a detector structure that marries this effect along with the unique bandalignment of the heterostructure which suggest an Ohmic contact for the electrons but a Schottky barrier for the holes. Using a dissipative quantum transport model, namely the Non-Equilibrium Green’s Functions with self-consistent Born approximation accounting for electron-electron and electron-phonon interactions, we calculate energy and position resolved electron and hole currents through these heterostructure and discover a 20X ratio of electron-to-hole ratio in an illustrative simulation which demonstrates the potential for reducing the hole contribution to dark current and modulating the recombination mechanisms and therefore the lifetime of the carriers in the heterostructure.