Time resolved photo-luminescent decay characterization of mercury cadmium telluride focal plane arrays.

The minority carrier lifetime is a measurable material property that is an indication of infrared detector device performance. To study the utility of measuring the carrier lifetime, an experiment has been constructed that can time resolve the photo-luminescent decay of a detector or wafer sample housed inside a liquid nitrogen cooled Dewar. Motorized stages allow the measurement to be scanned over the sample surface, and spatial resolutions as low as 50µm have been demonstrated.

Simulation and experimental characterization of the point spread function, pixel saturation, and blooming of a mercury cadmium telluride focal plane array.

A custom IR spot scanning experiment was constructed to project subpixel spots on a mercury cadmium telluride focal plane array (FPA). The hardware consists of an FPA in a liquid nitrogen cooled Dewar, high precision motorized stages, a custom aspheric lens, and a 1.55 and 3.