Reciprocity Failure in HgCdTe Detectors: Measurements and Mitigation

A detailed study of reciprocity failure in four 1.7 micron cutoff HgCdTe near-infrared detectors is presented. The sensitivity to reciprocity failure is approximately 0.1%decade over up to five orders of magnitude in illumination intensity. The four detectors, which represent three successive production runs with modified growth recipes, show large differences in amount and spatial structure of reciprocity failure. Reciprocity failure could be reduced to negligible levels by cooling the detectors to about 110 K. No wavelength dependence was observed. The observed spatial structure appears to be weakly correlated with image persistence.