Enhancement of radiative lifetime in semiconductors using photonic crystals

In this work we present a structure consisting of a semiconductor sample immersed between two one-dimensional photonic crystals, designed with the aim to investigate the possibility to increase radiative lifetime in infrared photodetectors, i.e., to decrease the background radiation limit. Since we used a HgCdTe detector for the detection of CO2 laser radiation, we formed a defect in the front-side photonic crystal with the transmission peak on 10.6 mu m. Our numerical calculations show that the 1-D photonic crystal structures at the front and at the back side of the semiconductor sample significantly increase the radiative lifetime in the photodetector. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.