Focal Plane Arrays from UV up to VLWIR

摘要

Since 2002, the THALES Group has been manufacturing sensitive arrays using QWIP technology based on GaAs and related Ⅲ-Ⅴ compounds, at the Alcatel-Thales-Ⅲ-Ⅴ^sLab (formerly part of THALES Research and Technology Laboratory). In the past researchers claimed many advantages of QWIPs. Uniformity was one of these and has been the key parameter for the production to start. Another widely claimed advantage for QWIPs was the so-called band-gap engineering and versatility of the HI-V processing allowing the custom design of quantum structures to fulfil the requirements of specific applications such as very long wavelength (VLWIR) or multispectral detection. In this presentation, we give the status of our LWIR QWIP production line, and also the current status of QWIPs for MWIR (＜ 5μm＝ and VLWIR (＞15μm) arrays.As the QWIP technology cannot cover the full electromagnetic spectrum, we develop other semiconductor compounds for SWIR and UV applications. We present here the status of our first FPA realization in UV with GaN alloy, and at 1.5μm with InGaAs photodiodes.