This paper demonstrates the performance of planar geometry InGaAs/InP avalanche diodes, specifically designed and fabricated for Geiger-mode operation at wavelengths around 1550nm, in terms of dark count rate, single-photon detection efficiency, afterpulsing and photon-timing jitter.
We report on the characterization of the response of windowless silicon avalanche photo-diodes to electrons in the 90-900 eV energy range. The electrons were provided by a monoenergetic electron gun present in the LASEC laboratories of University of Roma Tre. We find that the avalanche photo-diode generates a current proportional to the current of electrons hitting its active surface. The gain is found to depend on the electron energy $E_e$, and varies from $2.147 \pm 0.027$ (for $E_e = 90$ eV) to $385.8 \pm 3.3$ (for $E_e = 900$ eV), when operating the diode at a bias of $V_{apd} = 350$ V.} T…
One of the most common approaches for quenching single-photon avalanche diodes is to use a passive resistor in series with it. A drawback of this approach has been the limited recovery speed of the single-photon avalanche diodes. High resistance is needed to quench the avalanche, leading to slower recharging of the single-photon avalanche diodes depletion capacitor. We address this issue by replacing a fixed quenching resistor with a bias-dependent adaptive resistive switch. Reversible generation of metallic conduction enables switching between low and high resistance states under unipolar bia…
Review of germanium-silicon single-photon avalanche diodes
Artilux Inc.(Artlux公司);Institute of Photonics and Quantum Sciences, Heriot-Watt University(赫瑞-瓦特大学光子与量子科学研究所);James Watt School of Engineering, University of Glasgow(格拉斯哥大学詹姆斯·瓦特工程学院);Department of Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Boston(马萨诸塞大学波士顿分校工程系)
We characterize the temporal evolution of the afterpulse probability in a free-running negative feedback avalanche diode (NFAD) over an extended range, from $\sim$300 ns to $\sim$1 ms. This is possible thanks to an extremely low dark count rate on the order of 1 cps at 10% efficiency, achieved by operating the NFAD at a temperatures as low as 143 K. Experimental results in a large range of operating temperatures (223-143 K) are compared with a legacy afterpulsing model based on multiple trap families at discrete energy levels, which is found to be lacking in physical completeness. Subsequently…
Silicon Carbide device (4H-SiC) has potential radiation hardness, high saturated carrier velocity and low temperature sensitivity theoretically. The Silicon Low Gain Avalanche Diode (LGAD) has been verified to have excellent time performance. Therefore, the 4H-SiC LGAD is introduced in this work for application to detect the Minimum Ionization Particles (MIPs). We provide guidance to determine the thickness and doping level of the gain layer after an analytical analysis. The gain layer thickness $d_{gain}=0.5~μm$ is adopted in our design. We design two different types of 4H-SiC LGAD which have…
Proton irradiation effects on a Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPADs) device manufactured using a 150-nm CMOS process are presented. An irradiation campaign has been carried out with protons of 20 MeV and 24 MeV on several samples of a test chip containing SPADs arrays with two different junction layouts. The dark count rate distributions have been analyzed as a function of the displacement damage dose. Annealing and cooling have been investigated as possible damage mitigation approaches. We also discuss, through a space radiation simulation, the suitability of such devices on several space m…
We demonstrate an efficient and scalable compressive Raman parallelization scheme based on single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) arrays to reach pixel dwell times of 23 $μ$s, representing over 10$\times$ speed-up using the otherwise weak spontaneous Raman effect.
Single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) based transient imaging suffers from an aberration called pile-up. When multiple photons arrive within a single repetition period of the illuminating laser, the SPAD records only the arrival of the first photon; this leads to a bias in the recorded light transient wherein the transient response at later time-instants are under-estimated. An unfortunate consequence of this is the need to operate the illumination at low-power levels to reduce the probability of multiple photons returning in a single period. Operating the laser at low power results in either l…
PIXELATED geiger-mode avalanche photodiodes(PPDs), often called silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are emerging as an excellent replacement for traditional photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) in a variety of detectors, especially those for subatomic physics experiments, which requires extensive test and operation procedures in order to achieve uniform responses from all the devices. In this paper, we show for two PPD brands, Hamamatsu MPPC and SensL SPM, that the dark noise rate, breakdown voltage and rate of correlated avalanches can be inferred from the sole measure of dark current as a function of o…
High-energy physics detectors, like Low Gain Avalanche Detectors (LGADs) that will be used as fast timing detectors in the High Luminosity LHC experiments, have to exhibit a significant radiation tolerance. Thereby the impact of radiation on the highly boron-doped gain layer that enables the internal charge multiplication, is of special interest, since due to the so-called Acceptor Removal Effect (ARE) a radiation-induced deactivation of active boron dopants takes place. In this paper we present defect-spectroscopy measurements (Deep-Level Transient Spectroscopy and Thermally Stimulated Curren…
A successfull application of Geiger-mode multipixel avalanche diodes (GMAPDs) for pulse-shape discrimination in alpha-beta spectrometry using organic liquid scintillator is described in this paper. Efficient discrimination of alpha and beta components in the emission of radioactive isotopes is achieved for alpha energies above 0.3 MeV. The ultra-compact design of the scintillating detector helps to efficiently suppress cosmic-ray and ambient radiation background. This approach allows construction of hand-held robust devices for monitoring of radioactive contamination in various environmental c…
Capacitive-coupled Low-Gain Avalanche Diode (AC-LGAD) sensors are being developed for high-energy particle physics experiments as a detector which provides fast time information with fine spatial resolution. This paper describes optimizations of AC-LGAD sensor fabrication parameters, such as doping concentrations of the gain and electrode layers as well as the AC insulator capacitance, to realize $\mathcal{O}$(10)~\um{} spacial resolution, small charge cross talk to the neighboring electrodes, detection efficiency higher than 99\% at a 10$^{-4}$ fake rate and time resolution of about 30~ps. Th…
We characterize a new commercial, back-illuminated reach-through silicon single-photon avalanche photo diode (SPAD) SAP500 (Laser Components. Inc.), operated in Geiger-mode for purpose of photon counting. We show that for this sensor a significant interplay exists between dark counts, detection efficiency, afterpulsing, excess voltage and operating temperature, sometimes requiring a careful optimization tailored for a specific application. We find that a large flat plateau of sensitive area of about 0.5 mm in diameter, a peak quantum efficiency of 73% at 560 nm and timing precision down to 150…
We report precise TCAD simulations of IHEP-IME-v1 Low Gain Avalanche Diode (LGAD) calibrated by secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS). Our setup allows us to evaluate the leakage current, capacitance, and breakdown voltage of LGAD, which agree with measurements' results before irradiation. And we propose an improved LGAD Radiation Damage Model (LRDM) which combines local acceptor removal with global deep energy levels. The LRDM is applied to the IHEP-IME-v1 LGAD and able to predict the leakage current well at -30 $^{\circ}$C after an irradiation fluence of $ Φ_{eq}=2.5 \times 10^{15} ~n_{eq}/…
Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPAD) are affordable photodetectors, capable to collect extremely fast low-energy events, due to their single-photon sensibility. This makes them very suitable for time-of-flight-based range imaging systems, allowing to reduce costs and power requirements, without sacrifizing much temporal resolution. In this work we describe a computational model to simulate the behaviour of SPAD sensors, aiming to provide a realistic camera model for time-resolved light transport simulation, with applications on prototyping new reconstructions techniques based on SPAD time-of-…
InGaAs/InP single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) are widely used in practical applications requiring near-infrared photon counting such as quantum key distribution (QKD). Photon detection efficiency and dark count rate are the intrinsic parameters of InGaAs/InP SPADs, due to the fact that their performances cannot be improved using different quenching electronics given the same operation conditions. After modeling these parameters and developing a simulation platform for InGaAs/InP SPADs, we investigate the semiconductor structure design and optimization. The parameters of photon detection ef…
Silicon sensors with high time resolution can help particle identification in the International Linear Collider (ILC). We are studying Low Gain Avalanche Diodes (LGADs) as a high timing resolution sensor. As a step to develop LGADs, we are now focusing to characterize Avalanche Photo Diode (APD)s, because the APDs has the same multiplication structure as LGADs. We studied the characteristics of APDs with particles from radioisotopes.
Silicon single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) is a core device for single-photon detection in the visible and the near-infrared range, and widely used in many applications. However, due to limits of the structure design and device fabrication for current silicon SPADs, the key parameters of detection befficiency and timing jitter are often forced to compromise. Here, we propose a nanostructured silicon SPAD, which achieves high detection efficiency with excellent timing jitter simultaneously over a broad spectral range. The optical and electric simulations show significant performance enhanceme…
Charge multiplication through avalanche processes is commonly employed in the detection of single photons or charged particles in high-energy physics and beyond. In this report, we provide a detailed discussion of the properties of avalanches driven by two species of charge carriers, e.g. electrons and holes in a semiconductor exposed to an electric field. We derive equations that describe the general case of avalanches developing in inhomogeneous electric fields and give their analytical solutions for constant fields. We discuss consequences for the time resolution achievable with detectors t…
We report on the first demonstration of fluorescence detection using single-photon avalanche photodiodes (SPADs) monolithically integrated with a microfabricated surface ion trap. The SPADs are positioned below the trapping positions of the ions, and designed to detect 370 nm photons emitted from single $^{174}$Yb$^+$ and $^{171}$Yb$^+$ ions. We achieve an ion/no-ion detection fidelity for $^{174}$Yb$^+$ of 0.99 with an average detection window of 7.7(1) ms. We report a dark count rate as low as 1.2 kHz at room temperature operation. The fidelity is limited by laser scatter, dark counts, and h…
A near-infrared (NIR) enhanced silicon single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) fabricated in a customized 0.13 $μ$m CMOS technology is presented. The SPAD has a depleted absorption volume of approximately 15 $μ$m x 15 $μ$m x 18 $μ$m. Electrons generated in the absorption region are efficiently transported by drift to a central active avalanche region with a diameter of 2 $μ$m. At the operating voltage, the active region contains a spherically uniform field peak, enabling the multiplication of electrons originating from all corners of the device. The advantages of the SPAD architecture include hig…
We have performed a statistical characterization of the effect of afterpulsing in a free-running silicon single-photon detector by measuring the distribution of afterpulse waiting times in response to pulsed illumination and fitting it by a sum of exponentials. We show that a high degree of goodness of fit can be obtained for 5 exponentials, but the physical meaning of estimated characteristic times is dubious. We show that a continuous limit of the sum of exponentials with a uniform density between the limiting times gives excellent fitting results in the full range of the detector response f…
Photonic quantum technologies promise a revolution of the world of information processing, from simulation and computing to communication and sensing, thanks to the many advantages of exploiting single photons as quantum information carriers. In this scenario, single-photon detectors play a key role. On the one hand, superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) are able to provide remarkable performance on a broad spectral range, but their applicability is often limited by the need of cryogenic operating temperatures. On the other hand, single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) overc…
We report on the first realization of time-dependent quantum detector tomography for commercially available InGaAs avalanche photo detectors. For the construction of appropriate time-dependent POVMs from experimentally measured data, we introduce a novel scheme to calculate the weight of the regularization term based on the amount of measured data. We compare our POVM-based results with the theoretical predictions of the previously developed model by Gouzien et al. In contrast to our measurement-based construction of a time-dependent POVM for photon detectors, this previous investigation exten…
Single-photon detectors, like Avalanche Photo Diodes (APDs), have a great importance in many fields like quantum key distribution, laser ranging, florescence microscopy, etc. Afterpulsing is a typical non ideal behavior of APDs, operated in Geiger mode, which adversely affects any application which measures the number or timing of detection events. Several conflicting studies have tried to model afterpulsing behavior and link it to fundamental semiconductor physics. Here we describe experiments we performed on at least 2 different detectors from 3 manufacturers, all commonly used in quantum op…
We demonstrate high count rate single photon detection at telecom wavelengths using a thermoelectrically-cooled semiconductor diode. Our device consists of a single InGaAs avalanche photodiode driven by a 2 GHz gating frequency signal and coupled to a tuneable self-differencing circuit for enhanced detection sensitivity. We find the count rate is linear with the photon flux in the single photon detection regime over approximately four orders of magnitude, and saturates at 1 gigacount/s at high photon fluxes. This result highlights promising potential for APDs in high bit rate quantum informati…
It is challenging to implement genuine free running single photon detectors for the 1550 nm wavelength range with simultaneously high detection efficiency (DE), low dark noise, and good time resolution. We report a novel read out system for the signals from a negative feedback avalanche diode (NFAD) which allows useful operation of these devices at a temperature of 193 K and results in very low dark counts (~100 CPS), good time jitter (~30 ps), and good DE (~10%). We characterized two NFADs with a time correlation method using photons generated from weak coherent pulses (WCP) and photon pairs …
We report on the results of the search for dark photons with mass around 1.5$\,\rm eV/c^2$ using a multilayer dielectric haloscope equipped with an affordable and commercially available photosensor. The multilayer stack, which enables the conversion of dark photons (DP) to Standard Model photons, is made of 23 bilayers of alternating SiO$_2$ and Si$_3$N$_4$ thin films with linearly increasing thicknesses through the stack (a configuration known as a "chirped stack"). The thicknesses have been chosen according to an optimisation algorithm in order to maximise the DP-photon conversion in the ene…
Low Gain Avalanche Diodes (LGADs) are thin (20-50 $μm$)silicon di ode sensors with modest internal gain (typically 5 to 50) and exceptional time resolution (17 $ps$ to 50 $ps$). However, the granularity of such devices is limited to the millimeter scale due to the need to include protection structures at the boundaries of the readout pads to avoid premature breakdown due to large local electric fields. In this paper we present a new approach -- the Deep-Junction LGAD (DJ-LGAD) -- that decouples the high-field gain region from the readout plane. This approach is expected to improve the achievab…
Single-photon detectors (SPDs) are the most sensitive instruments for light detection. In the near-infrared range, SPDs based on III-V compound semiconductor avalanche photodiodes have been extensively used during the past two decades for diverse applications due to their advantages in practicality including small size, low cost and easy operation. In the past decade, the rapid developments and increasing demands in quantum information science have served as key drivers to improve the device performance of single-photon avalanche diodes and to invent new avalanche quenching techniques. This Re…
In this work we investigate operation in the Geiger mode of the new single photon avalanche photo diode (SPAD) SAP500 manufactured by Laser Components. This SPAD is sensitive in the range 400-1000nm and has a conventional reach-through structure which ensures good quantum efficiency at the long end of the spectrum. By use of passive and active quenching schemes we investigate detection efficiency, timing jitter, dark counts, afterpulsing, gain and other important parameters and compare them to the "standard" low noise SPAD C30902SH from Perkin Elmer. We conclude that SAP500 offers better combi…
InGaAs/InP-based semiconductor avalanche photodiode are usually employed for single-photon counting at telecom wavelength. However they are affected by afterpulsing which limits the diode performance. Recently, Princeton Lightwave has commercialised a diode integrating monolithically a feedback resistor. This solution effectively quenches the avalanche and drastically reduces afterpulsing. Here, we report the development and characterization of a detector module based on this diode, implementing an active hold-off circuit which further reduces the afterpulsing and notably improves the detector…
We report a 1.036 GHz gated Geiger mode InGaAs avalanche photodiode with a detection dead time of just 1.93 ns. This is demonstrated by full recovery of the detection efficiency two gate cycles after a detection event, as well as a measured maximum detection rate of 497 MHz. As an application, we measure the second order correlation function $g^{(2)}$ of the emission from a diode laser with a single detector which works reliably at high speed owing to the extremely short dead time of the detector. The device is ideal for high bit rate fiber wavelength quantum key distribution and photonic quan…
To measure light emission pattern in scintillator, higher sensitivity and faster response are required to photo detector. Such as single photon avalanche diode (SPAD), conventional pixelated photo detector is operated at Geiger avalanche multiplication. However higher gain of SPAD seems very attractive, photon detection efficiency per unit area is low. This weak point is mainly caused by Geiger avalanche mechanism. To overcome these difficulties, we designed Pixelated Linear Avalanche Integration Detector using Silicon on Insulator technology (SOI-Plaid). To avoid dark count noise and dead tim…
We give an analytic treatment of the time resolution and efficiency of Single Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPADs) and Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs). We provide closed-form expressions for structures with uniform electric fields and efficient numerical prescriptions for arbitrary electric field configurations. We discuss the sensor performance for single photon detection and also for charged particle detection.
The upgrades of ATLAS and CMS for the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) highlighted physics objects timing as a tool to resolve primary interactions within a bunch crossing. Since the expected pile-up is around 200, with an r.m.s. time spread of 180 ps, a time resolution of about 30 ps is needed. The timing detectors will experience a 1-MeV neutron equivalent fluence of about $Φ_{eq}=10^{14}$ and $10^{15}$ cm$^{-2}$ for the barrel and end-cap regions, respectively. In this contribution, deep diffused Avalanche Photo Diodes (APDs) produced by Radiation Monitoring Devices are examined as candidate ti…
Motivated by the need for fast timing detectors to withstand up to 2 MGy of ionizing dose at the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider, prototype low gain avalanche detectors (LGADs) have been fabricated in single pad configuration, 2x2 arrays, and related p-i-n diodes, and exposed to Co- 60 sources for study. Devices were fabricated with a range of dopant layer concentrations and, for the arrays, a variety of inter-pad distances and distances from the active area to the edge. Measurements of capacitance versus voltage and leakage current versus voltage have been made to compare pre- and post-…
In order to build a new concept of photomultiplier based on silicon technology, design and characterization of 5x5 arrays of a new generation of single photon avalanche diodes (SPAD) manufactured by ST-Microelectronics have been performed. Single photons sensitivity, dark noise and timing resolution of the SPAD- STM devices in several experimental conditions have been evaluated. Moreover, the effects arising from the multiple integration of many elements and the study of their common read-out have been deeply investigated.
Integrated quantum photonics, which allows for the development and implementation of chip-scale devices, is recognized as a key enabling technology on the road towards scalable quantum networking schemes. However, many state-of-the-art integrated quantum photonics demonstrations still require the coupling of light to external photodetectors. On-chip silicon single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) provide a viable solution as they can be seamlessly integrated with photonic components, and operated with high efficiencies and low dark counts at temperatures achievable with thermoelectric cooling. …
Mortality of ultra-thin LGADs and PiN diodes from high energy deposition
Brookhaven National Laboratory(布鲁海文国家实验室);Brown University(布朗大学);Cheikh Anta Diop University(谢赫·安塔·迪奥普大学);University of New Mexico(新墨西哥大学);Stuyvesant High School(斯泰文森高中)
Single-photon detection is an invaluable tool for many applications ranging from basic research to consumer electronics. In this respect, the Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) plays a key role in enabling a broad diffusion of these techniques thanks to its remarkable performance, room-temperature operation, and scalability. In this paper we present a silicon technology that allows the fabrication of SPAD-arrays with an unprecedented combination of low timing jitter (95 ps FWHM) and high detection efficiency at red and near infrared wavelengths (peak of 70% at 650 nm, 45% at 800 nm). We disc…