RX SYSTEM FOR AGED WITH VISUAL IMPAIRMENT

Not Available Infrared focal plane array detector fabrication on silicon substrates has many desirable features such as transparent substrates (no thinning), low cost large area wafers, robust mechanical properties, absence of thermal expansion mismatch between the detector and silicon readout, and option for monolithic construction. The use of silicon based Schottky barriers for infrared detection is well established. The performance of PtSi/p-Si based imagers is limited by the low photoresponse of the Schottky diodes. We propose to demonstrate a new heterojunction internal photoemission (HIP) infrared detector structure that retains the silicon substrate advantages of a Schottky-barrier detector while providing significantly higher quantum efficiency. The silicide Schottky contact will be replaced with a III-V thin film narrow gap semiconductor (InAsSb) grown on a p-type silicon substrate. Band gap engineering of the semiconductive materials allows optimization of the detector parameters. Performance predictions of the HIP detector based on a model of photon absorption and carrier diffusion indicate a potential for more than an order of magnitude improvement in quantum efficiency over PtSi/p-Si detectors .