Santa Barbara Research Center

Johannes B De Bruin

Mary J Hewitt

James D Phillips

A blocked impurity band detector having a high fill factor is comprised of a radiation detecting layer and an overlying blocking layer which are interposed between a plurality of rear contact regions and a frontside common electrical contact layer. Disposed over the surface of the frontside contact layer is a layer of metalization formed as a substantially transparent grid. Radiation enters the detecting layer through the grid, contact layer, and blocking layer. Each of the rear contact regions is conductively coupled to an end of a metallic conductor, or via, which is disposed through an insulating substrate. The opposite end of each of the metallic conductors exits the back surface of the substrate and is adapted for connection to an integrated circuit readout device.

Backside contact blocked impurity band detector

A system 10 for imaging radiation received from a scene provides for the focusing of the radiation upon a set of detectors 12. A set of amplifiers 14 couple the detectors to an image processor 24 for forming an image of the scene. The amplifiers are pulsed with a repeating sequence of pulses providing sequential operation of the amplifiers. The amplifiers and the detectors are constructed on a single substrate which is cyrogenically cooled for improved signal-to-noise ratio. Amplifying elements in each of the amplifiers are powered by energy stored as electric charges in capacitors. The capacitors are recharged with pulses from a pulsing unit repetitively in a repeating sequence of amplifier operation. The capacitors provide for integration of detector signals, there being additional integration performed at the front end of each of the amplifiers utilizing stray capacitance and detector capacitance. Adjustment of front end voltage of each of the amplifiers permits compensation for nonuniformities among the detectors. There results an improved signal-to-noise ratio which can be optimized for different sampling rates of incoming radiation signals.

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Santa Barbara, CA, United States of America

Johannes B De Bruin