Low-resistance,long-life contacts by laser-annealing of silver-implanted p-type PbTe

Various procedures have been investigated for fabricating to p-type PbTe metal contacts which have a low resistance that remains low with age. Polishing and etching procedures for achieving satisfactory simple platinum-plated contacts are described. Significant improvement, yielding lower resistance and longer life contacts, has been effected by a procedure involving implantation of silver at three ion energies followed by a single pulse anneal with ruby laser radiation. Also described is a copper-gallium alloy which allowed convenient and easy bonding, at temperatures just above room temperature, of PbTe diode lasers to heat sinks.