Analysis of Photoemissive Schottky Barrier Photodetectors

Abstract

The performance of Schottky barrier photodetectors employing internal photoemission process is studied. Background‐photon‐noise limited detectivities D_λ^* have been calculated for typical operating conditions. The use of cooled optical filters has also been investigated. The analysis shows that the detectivities may be considerably less (by about an order of magnitude) than those realized for the more conventional quantum detectors employing photovoltaic or photoconductive effects.