Anodic fluoride passivation of type II InAs/GaSb superlattice for short-wavelength infrared detector

One of the major challenges of antimonide-based devices arises owing to the large number of surface states generated during fabrication processes. Surface passivation and subsequent capping of the surfaces are absolutely essential for any practical applicability of this material system. In this paper, we proposed a new passivation method (zinc sulfide coating after anodic fluoride) for InAs/GaSb superlattice infrared detectors. InAs/GaSb superlattice short-wavelength infrared materials were grown by molecular beam epitaxy on GaSb (100) substrates. A GaSb buffer layer, which can decrease the occurrence of defects with similar pyramidal structure, was grown for optimized superlattice growth condition. High resolution X-ray diffraction indicated that the period of the superlattice corresponding to fourth satellite peak was 39.77 Aa. The atomic force microscopy images show the roughness was below 1.7 nm. The result of photoresponse spectra shows that the cutoff wavelength was 3.05 μm at 300 K. (orig.)