Low irradiance background limited type-II superlattice MWIR M-barrier imager

We report a type-II superlattice mid-wave infrared 320×256 imager at 81 K with the M-barrier design that achieved background limited performance (BLIP) and ∼99% operability. The 280 K blackbody's photon irradiance was limited by an aperture and a band-pass filter from 3.6 μm to 3.8 μm resulting in a total flux of ∼5×10(12) ph.cm(-2).s(-1). Under these low-light conditions, and consequently the use of a 13.5 ms integration time, the imager was observed to be BLIP thanks to a ∼5 pA dark current from the 27 μm wide pixels. The total noise was dominated by the photon flux and read-out circuit which gave the imager a noise equivalent input of ∼5×10(10) ph.cm(-2).s(-1) and temperature sensitivity of 9 mK with F/2.3 optics. Excellent imagery obtained using a 1-point correction alludes to the array's uniform responsivity.