High energy proton and alpha radiation effects on GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well infrared photodetectors

Gallium arsenide quantum well infrared photodetectors (QWIPs) are ideally suited for infrared imagery due to their detection capability over a wide infrared wavelength region and the feasibility of fabrication of monolithic two-dimensional arrays of such detectors. This paper reports on the effects of high energy proton and alpha particle radiations on the performance of these devices. The particle energies ranged from 0.8 MeV to 10.0 MeV and the fluences used in this work ranged from 10(11) to 10(16) cm(-2). The dark current and spectral response of these radiated devices were measured at different fluence levels. Using the spectral response as a measure of device performance, it is concluded that the device performance decreases with fluence and the degradation due to alpha particles is greater than for protons of the same energy. Further, the damage to device performance decreases with the increase in the energy of both types of these radiations. From prior work, it was expected that these devices would be sensitive to permanent radiation damage. The extent of damage, however, could not be pre-judged due to the device complexity. These are the first reported measurements of radiation hardness of QWIPs.