Characteristics of gradually doped LWIR diodes by hydrogenation

The hydrogenation effects on HgCdTe diode performance are presented and the mechanism of hydrogenation is revealed. By the hydrogenation, R₀A is increased by 30 times and photo-response is also improved. It is supposed that these are explained by the increased minority carrier lifetime by the hydrogenation. However, it is found from LBIC measurements that the minority carrier lifetime doesn’t increase by the hydrogenation. An important clue that explains the hydrogenation effects is found from Hall measurements. It is found that, after the hydrogenation, the doping concentration of Hg-vacancy doped substrate decreases and the mobility increases. For the heavily hydrogenated bulk substrate, it is also found that the hydrogen passivates the whole Hg-vacancy and reveals the residual impurity and p-type doping concentration is exponentially graded. From these measurements, the diffusion current model of gradually doped diode is proposed. This model shows that the diffusion current of the graded junction diode is 2 orders of magnitude smaller than that of the abrupt junction diode, which clearly explains the R₀A increase by the hydrogenation. Medicisimulation to investigate the change of LBIC signal by the doping grading also coincides with the measurements. From these measurements and model, the hydrogenation effects are attributed to the grading of Hg-vacancy doped p-type substrate by the diffused hydrogen.