Damage threshold of HgCdTe induced by continuous-wave CO2 laser

We studied the interaction of p-type HgCdTe with a continuous-wave (cw) carbon dioxide (CO2) laser experimentally and theoretically and obtained an apparent damage threshold temperature, 670–680 K, which corresponds to the temperature of the solid–solid phase transition of HgCdTe. We proposed a two-dimensional thermal conducting model dealing with the thermal diffusion of cw laser processing of materials in this letter. The temperature distribution during the interaction between HgCdTe and the cw CO2 laser is also presented and discussed. All the theoretical calculations are in good agreement with the experimental results.