Hyperdoping Silicon For Infrared Detection and Night Vision Applications

Infrared (IR) detection has many commercial applications such as in night vision and fiber optic communications. Current night vision devices are large and low-res, and can't be integrated with consumer electronics. Being able to make silicon (Si) based IR detectors would make it substantially cheaper and easier to integrate IR imaging and other optical systems into consumer devices. Si is useful for electronic devices, but isn't a good material for IR imaging because it doesn't efficiently absorb IR light. By adding impurities to Si in a process called hyperdoping, IR absorption can be induced, which could lead to Si-based low-light imaging. It's been shown that hyperdoped Si can detect IR light, but only at low efficiency. Our research has been in manipulating the doping and fabrication processes to increase the efficiency of Si-based IR detectors.~ We have fabricated new photodetectors based on these improvements, and I measured the optical and electrical properties of these devices. The new devices show improvement of nearly two orders of magnitude in the infrared photoresponse from what has already been shown, demonstrating this material's potential for infrared imaging.