InAsSb Nanowire and Nickel Thin Film Analysis for IR Photodetector Applications

Résumé

The focus of this research is on two aspects related to the fabrication of practical nanowire-based IR detectors. Experimentally verifying the validity of finite element-based simulations for InAsSb nanowires to determine the influence of pitch size on nanowire absorptance peaks and investigating the transmittance and conductance of nickel thin films to determine the optimal layer thickness which maximizes these properties. Based on the comparison between the experimental FTIR data and the theoretical simulation data, it can be concluded that the experimental data closely approximates the simulation data, with the position and magnitude of the absorptance peaks matching very closely. Also, it can be seen that increasing pitch sizes tend to redshift the absorptance peaks further into the IR range. Using a discrete relative change optimization method with equally weighted transmittance and resistivity, the optimal nickel film thickness was found to be approximately 3.3nm. This thickness gives transmittance and resistivity values of 80% and 1.7 x 10^-6 Ωm, respectively.