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HgCdTe (Mercury Cadmium Telluride / MCT) staring arrays for infrared detection do show constant improvements regarding their compactness and performances. New detectors are now proposed offering system solutions in the different IR wavebands and profiting of the latest technology improvements as well as MCT performance advantages and cost reduction. As a matter of fact, the size of MCT wafer has grown to 4", the pixel pitch was lowered to 15µm while maintaining outstanding results on the Focal Plane Arrays (FPA) uniformity. New functions as the Analog to Digital Conversion (ADC) are added to read-out circuits. Results are presented concerning Non Uniformity Corrections (NUC) stabilities for two Sofradir products. Then results from developments of integrated ADC are addressed and finally, the Jupiter 1280x1024 mid-wave (MWIR) MCT detector performance results are presented.

The possibility to grow HgCdTe by Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) on large alternative substrates opens the way of increasing the size and reducing the cost of infrared FPAs operating in the Medium Wave InfraRed (MWIR) bands. Germanium was chosen several years ago at Leti because its 'in situ' and 'ex situ' surface preparations are much easier to control compared to the more conventionally used silicon alternative substrate. Moreover extremely high quality germanium "epiready" substrates are commercially available at a reasonable cost for wafer sizes up to 8 inches. MWIR HgCdTe wafers grown today by Defir (LETI/Sofradir joint laboratory) on germanium (up to 4 inches diameter) using MBE, exhibit electrical and physical properties that enables the fabrication of FPAs with various sizes (320x256, 640x512, 1280x1024) and pitches (from 30µm to 15µm) with electro-optical performances similar to the standard process based on the more conventional epilayers of HgCdTe grown on CdZnTe by Liquid Phase Epitaxy (LPE). Due to the low microscopic and macroscopic defect density that can be obtained on such wafers, operabilities above 99.9% are reached today. A status of this MBE growth technology is presented as well as the FPAs performances, including conventional industrial products manufactured such as 320x256 (pitch 30µm), 640x512 (pitch 15µm) and the largest 1280x1024 (pitch of 15µm) more recently available.