Infrared detectors

NOV 01, 1977

Military uses have given way to a wide range of general applications with the development, since the 1940’s, of polycrystalline‐film and, later, single‐crystal infrared photon detectors.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3037789

Henry Levinstein

Infrared radiation has been studied with detectors of one kind or another since about 1800. The difference between the techniques of the first century‐and‐a‐half and the period since World War II is that the earlier devices were thermal detectors, responding to temperature change caused by integrated absorption of energy, while the more recent devices are true photon detectors. In the latter type, interaction of individual photons (above a certain threshold energy) with the solid detector results directly in electron emission or charge‐carrier excitation.

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More about the authors

Henry Levinstein, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York.