Mercury cadmium telluride pyroelectric

D. Long and J. L. Schmidt, Mercury-Cadmium Telluride and Closely Related Alloys . H. Putley, The Pyroelectric Detector... 

Fourier transform IR instruments contain no dispersing element, and all wavelengths are detected and measured simultaneously. Instead of a monochromator, an interferometer is used to produce interference patterns that contain the infrared spectral information. The. same types of sources used in dispersive instruments are used in FTIR spectrometers. Transducers are typically triglycine sulfate—a pyroelectric transducer—or mercury cadmium telluride—a photoconductive trans-... 

Pyroelectric infrared detectors are inferior in detectivity by one or two orders of magnitude compared with photoconductors such as cadmium mercury telluride, as shown in Fig. 7.15. However, such materials require temperatures of 200 K for efficient operation and generally respond to rather narrow bands at the infrared wavelengths. Pyroelectric devices can discriminate temperature differences of 0.1 K but find many useful applications in which the discrimination is limited to about 0.5 K. They have the great practical advantage of operating at normal ambient temperatures. 

---