Suppression of radiatively generated currents in infrared detectors

The radiative contribution to the dark current in an infrared detector has been measured over the temperature range 200-300 K. Good agreement was obtained between the measured currents and a theory based on radiative coupling between neighboring elements in the array. Detectors have been made which are close to radiatively limited and which become background limited in f/2 for temperatures below 200 K. By reverse biasing neighboring elements it has been possible to switch off up to 25% of the radiatively generated component of the dark current, demonstrating that radiative generation need not be a fundamental limitation for infrared detector arrays. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.