High Resolution And Affordable HgCdTe IR Staring Arrays

Staring array affordability has been the main goal of HgCdTe (Mercury Cadmium Telluride / MCT) infrared (IR) array developments for the last ten years. A lot of progresses have been made concerning the uniformity and the increase in wafer size, the readout circuit functions including Analog to Digital Conversion, the decrease in pixel pitch and the production capacity. Based on CEA-LETI/Sofradir HgCdTe growth process using Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) on Germanium substrate, large HgCdTe wafer sizes were manufactured including an outstanding crystal quality (see fig 1).