Empirical Study of the Disparity in Radiation Tolerance of the Minority-Carrier Lifetime Between II–VI and III–V MWIR Detector Technologies for Space Applications

The degradation of the minority-carrier recombination lifetime of various III–V nBn and II–VI HgCdTe midwave-infrared space detector materials under stepwise 63-MeV proton irradiation up to fluence of 7.5 × 1011 cm−2 and above has been measured using time-resolved photoluminescence while samples were held at 120 K to limit thermal annealing. As expected, the recombination rate of each sample was found to increase with proton fluence at a nearly constant rate, implying a near-linear increase in defect concentration. The rate of change of the carrier recombination rate, herein called the minority-carrier lifetime damage factor, was then plotted as a function of the initial recombination rate for each sample. Juxtaposing the III–V and II–VI results revealed a distinct disparity, with the incumbent detector material HgCdTe being roughly an order of magnitude more radiation tolerant to displacement damage from proton irradiation than any of the nBn materials. The results for the latter also suggest some degree of interrelation between the damage factor and initial lifetime. The behavior of the lifetime of each material under annealing revealed that HgCdTe exhibited nearly 100% recovery at 295 K whereas III–V materials recovered to only about 50% under the same conditions.