The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 06, 1984
Filed:
Nov. 09, 1981
Richard B Withers, Romsey, GB;
U.S. Philips Corporation, New York, NY (US);
Abstract
An infra-red radiation detector element and its manufacture. The detector element has a mesa (31) of infra-red sensitive material, e.g. cadmium mercury telluride, with separate metal electrodes (64 and 55, see FIG. 17) formed on side-walls of the mesa (31) from a metal layer 33. This permits a significant proportion of the current flow occurring between the electrodes (64 and 55) in operation of the element to pass across the bulk of the mesa (31) between its side-walls and not adjacent its top surface where the carrier recombination velocity may be higher. The mesa (31) is formed by ion-etching using a masking layer (24) e.g. of photoresist, and this permits reproducible etching over a uniform depth and the obtaining of a topographically rough surface to which the subsequently-deposited metal layer (33) can have good adhesion. The electrodes are formed from this layer (33) by a lift-off technique using the same masking layer (24). The ion-etch definition of the mesa (31) can also be used to etch unmasked parts of a passivating layer (14) on the element surface without any significant undercutting.