We report on the development of a new structure for type II superlattice photodiodes that we call the ''N'' design. In this new design, we insert an electron barrier between InAs and GaSb in the growth direction. The barrier pushes the electron and hole wavefunctions towards the layer edges and under bias, increases the overlap integral by about 25% leading to higher detectivity. InAs/AlSb/GaSb superlattices were studied with density functional theory. Both AlAs and InSb interfaces were taken into account by calculating the heavy hole-light hole (HH-LH) splittings. Experiments were carried out on single pixel photodiodes by measuring electrical and optical performance. With cutoff wavelength of 4.2 lm at 120 K, temperature dependent dark current and detectivity measurements show that the dark current is 2.5 Â 10 À9 A under zero bias with corresponding R 0 A resistance of 1.5 Â 10 4 X cm 2 for the 500 Â 500 lm 2 single pixel square photodetectors. Photodetector reaches BLIP condition at 125 K with the BLIP detectivity (D Ã BLIP) of 2.6 Â 10 10 Jones under 300 K background and À0.3 V bias voltage.

We investigate the band properties of InAs/AlSb/GaSb (N-structure) and InAs/GaSb material based type II superlattice (T2SL) photodedectors. The superlattice empirical pseudopotential method is used to define band-structures such as the bandgap and heavy hole-light hole (hh-lh) splitting energies in the mid-wavelength infrared range (MWIR) and long wavelength range (LWIR). The calculations are carried out on the variation of AlSb/GaSb layer thickness for (InAs)10.5/(AlSb)x/(GaSb)9-x and the variation of InAs layer thickness for (InAs)x/(AlSb)3/(GaSb)6 T2SL structures at 77 K. For the same bandgap energy of 229 meV (5.4 μm in wavelength), hh-lh splitting energy is calculated as 194 meV for the (InAs)7.5/(AlSb)3/(GaSb)6 structure compared to the (InAs)10.5/(GaSb)9 structure with hh-lh splitting energy of 91 meV within the MWIR. Long wavelength performance of InAs/AlSb/GaSb structure shows superior electronic properties over the standard InAs/GaSb T2SL structure with larger hh-lh splitting energy which is larger than the bandgap energy. The best result is obtained for (InAs)17/(AlSb)3/(GaSb)6 with the minimum bandgap of 128 meV with hh-lh splitting energy of 194 meV, which is important for suppressing the Auger recombination process. These values are very promising for a photodetector design in both MWIR and LWIR in high temperature applications.

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In this study, we present the theoretical investigation of type-II InAs/GaSb superlattice p-i-n detector. Kronig-Penney and envelope function approximation is used to calculate band gap energy and superlattice minibands. Variational method is also used to calculate exciton binding energies. Our results show that carriers overlap increases at GaSb/InAs interface on the higher energy side while it decreases at InAs/GaSb interface on the lower energy side with increasing reverse bias due to shifting the hole wavefunction toward to the GaSb/InAs interface decisively. Binding energies increase with increasing electric field due to overall overlap of electron and hole wave functions at the both interfaces in contrast with type I superlattices. This predicts that optical absorption is enhanced with increasing electric field. © 2013 American Institute of Physics

a b s t r a c tWe have studied the theoretical and experimental properties of InAs/AlSb/GaSb based type-II superlattice (T2SL) pin photodetector called N-structure. Electronic properties of the superlattice such as HH-LH splitting energies was investigated using first principles calculations taking into account InSb and AlAs as possible interface transition alloys between AlSb/InAs layers and individual layer thicknesses of GaSb and InAs. T2SL N-structure was optimized to operate as a MWIR detector based on these theoretical approaches tailoring the band gap and HH-LH splitting energies with InSb transition layers between InAs/AlSb interfaces. Experimental results show that AlSb layers in the structure act as carrier blocking barriers reducing the dark current. Dark current density and R 0 A product at 125 K were obtained as 1.8 Â 10 À6 A cm À2 and 800 O cm 2 at zero bias, respectively. The specific detectivity was measured as 3 Â 10 12 Jones with cut-off wavelengths of 4.3 lm at 79 K reaching to 2 Â 10 9 Jones and 4.5 lm at 255 K.