Reducing Surface Leakage Currents in FPAs of QWIPs

Chemical surface treatments during fabrication have been proposed to reduce surface leakage currents in focal-plane arrays (FPAs) of quantum-well infrared photodetectors (QWIPs). For reasons explained below, if most or all of the surface leakage currents could be eliminated by such treatments, then total dark currents could be reduced to about 1/4 or 1/5 of their original values.