Dark current and noise analyses of quantum dot infrared photodetectors.

Because the dark current and the noise of quantum dot infrared photodetectors (QDIPs) can bring about a degradation in their performance, they have attracted more and more attention in recent years. In this paper, an algorithm used to evaluate the dark current of the QDIP is proposed, which is based on the algorithm including the common contribution of the microscale and the nanoscale electron transport. Namely, by accounting for the dependence of the drift velocity on the applied electric field, we greatly enhance the accuracy of the dark current calculation compared with that in the previous algorithm. This proposed algorithm is further used to estimate the noise current of QDIP, and the calculated results show a good agreement with the published data.