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.
Flux dependent non-linearity (reciprocity failure) in HgCdTe near infrared detectors can severely impact an instruments performance, in particular with respect to precision photometric measurements. The cause of this effect is presently not understoo
d. To investigate reciprocity failure, a dedicated test system was built. For flux levels between 1 and 50,000 photons/s, a sensitivity to reciprocity failure of approximately 0.1%/decade was achieved. A wavelength independent non-linearity due to reciprocity failure of about 0.35%/decade was measured in a 1.7 micron HgCdTe detector.
