Hole effective masses and subband splitting in type-II superlattice infrared detectors

Journal Article · Mon May 02 04:00:00 EDT 2016 · Applied Physics Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4948387· OSTI ID:22591683

Soibel, Alexander; Gunapala, Sarath D. ^[1]

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1. Center for Infrared Photodetectors, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91109 (United States)

We explore band structure effects to help determine the suitability of n-type type-II superlattice (T2SL) absorbers for infrared detectors. It is often assumed that the exceedingly large growth-direction band-edge curvature hole effective mass in n-type long wavelength infrared (LWIR) T2SL would lead to low hole mobility and therefore low detector collection quantum efficiency. We computed the thermally averaged conductivity effective mass and show that the LWIR T2SL hole conductivity effective mass along the growth direction can be orders of magnitude smaller than the corresponding band-edge effective mass. LWIR InAs/GaSb T2SL can have significantly smaller growth-direction hole conductivity effective mass than its InAs/InAsSb counterpart. For the InAs/InAsSb T2SL, higher Sb fraction is more favorable for hole transport. Achieving long hole diffusion length becomes progressively more difficult for the InAs/InAsSb T2SL as the cutoff wavelength increases, since its growth-direction hole conductivity effective mass increases significantly with decreasing band gap. However, this is mitigated by the fact that the splitting between the top valence subbands also increases with the cutoff wavelength, leading to reduced inter-subband scattering and increased relaxation time.

• OSTI ID: 22591683
• Journal Information: Applied Physics Letters, Journal Name: Applied Physics Letters Journal Issue: 18 Vol. 108; ISSN APPLAB; ISSN 0003-6951
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
DIFFUSION
DIFFUSION LENGTH
EFFECTIVE MASS
GALLIUM ANTIMONIDES
HOLE MOBILITY
HOLES
INDIUM ARSENIDES
QUANTUM EFFICIENCY
RELAXATION TIME
SCATTERING
SUPERLATTICES
VALENCE
WAVELENGTHS