| Over the extremely broad electromagnetic spectrum, the near-infrared region (0.7--3 mum) is of great interests to physicists, chemists and biologists. Coherent photo-detection in the near-infrared as well as visible and other wavelength regions is extremely useful in identifying coherent light sources from the noisy background. It has great potential to be applied to single-molecule detection by surface-enhanced coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering. Other applications include chemical gas detection, remote sensing and environmental monitoring, semiconductor processing control and others.; Indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) based optoelectronic devices have been extensively investigated in the wavelength range extending from 800nm for gallium-rich material to 3mum for indium-rich material. A range of InGaAs alloys with bandgap energies in the near infrared wavelength range are investigated by solid-source molecular beam epitaxy (SSMBE). They include strain-free standard In0.532Ga0.468As and In0.532Ga0.468 AsNxSby lattice-matched to InP substrates, highly strained pseudomorphic InxGa1-xAs/InyGa 1-yAs quantum structures on InP substrates and relaxed metamorphic thick Inx>0.8Ga1-xAs device layers with cyclic arsenic-assisted in-situ annealed step-graded InAlAs buffer layers on GaAs and InP substrates. An InP/InAlAs/InGaAs heterojunction bipolar phototransistor (HPT) is designed, simulated and fabricated. The electrical and optical properties, such as responsivity and spectral response, of the HPT are characterized.; A compact standing-wave Fourier-transform interferometer system capable of coherent detection in the near-infrared region is demonstrated. A new technique of identifying coherent light sources using harmonic Fourier spectra analysis is developed. The system only includes a PZT-controlled gold-coated scan mirror and a partial-transparent (3.8% single-path loss) InP/InAlAs/InGaAs HPT. The close-loop scan range of PZT-controlled mirror is 32mum. With such mirror scan length, at the harmonic 5th order spectrum components, the resolution of the demonstrated interferometer is 37.5cm-1 with the free spectral range ∼340nm and central spectral position at 1500nm. The system resolution could reach 1 cm-1 with improved system design and elements selection. |
