High-speed and low-noise SACM avalanche photodiodes with an impact-ionization-engineered multiplication region

Duan, Ning; Wang, Shuling; Ma, Feng; Li, Ning; Campbell, Joe C.; Wang, Chad; Coldren, L.A.

doi:10.1109/lpt.2005.851903

Cited by 44 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Another approach to achieving low noise is introducing appropriately designed quantum wells and/or heterojunctions, 21,22 an approach known as impact ionization engineering (I 2 E) with appropriately designed heterostructures. [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] This approach relies on the differences in threshold energies for impact ionization between adjacent widebandgap and narrow-bandgap materials. Initial work that demonstrated the efficacy of this approach used the GaAs/ Al x Ga 1-x As material system.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…34 While this has been an improvement on current technology, there needs to be a significant improvement in k to compete with Si and Ge/Si APDs. Duan et al utilized the I 2 E approach in an MBE-grown InGaAlAs I 2 E separate absorption, charge, and multiplication (SACM) APD 31 and reported an excess noise equivalent to a k value of $0.12. An enhancement of this approach is to cascade multiple I 2 E multiplication cells, all operated at relatively low gain.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Toward deterministic construction of low noise avalanche photodetector materials

Rockwell

Ren

Woodson

et al. 2018

Applied Physics Letters

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Over the past 40þ years, III-V materials have been intensively studied for avalanche photodetectors, driven by applications including optical communications, imaging, quantum information processing, and autonomous vehicle navigation. Unfortunately, impact ionization is a stochastic process that introduces noise, thereby limiting sensitivity and achievable bandwidths, leading to intense effort to mitigate this noise through the identification of different materials and device structures. Exploration of these materials has seen limited success as it has proceeded in a largely ad hoc fashion due to little consensus regarding which fundamental properties are important. Here, we report an exciting step toward deterministic design of low-noise avalanche photodetector materials by alternating the composition at the monolayer scale; this represents a dramatic departure from previous approaches, which have concentrated on either unconventional compounds/alloys or nanoscale band-engineering. In particular, we demonstrate how to substantially improve upon the noise characteristics of the current state-of-the art telecom avalanche multipliers, In 0.52 Al 0.48 As grown on InP substrates, by growing the structure as a strain-balanced digital alloy of InAs and AlAs layers, each only a few atomic layers thick. The effective k-factor, which has historically been considered a fundamental material property, was reduced by 6-7Â from k ¼ 0.2 for bulk In 0.52 Al 0.48 As to k ¼ 0.05 by using the digital alloy technique. We also demonstrate that these "digital alloys" can significantly extend the photodetector cutoff wavelength well beyond those of their random alloy counterparts.

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Toward deterministic construction of low noise avalanche photodetector materials

Rockwell

Ren

Woodson

et al. 2018

Applied Physics Letters

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“…Due to cascade avalanche process, a smaller avalanche delay time and an ultra-high GBP, compared to those of the traditional APD design can be expected. Similar working principles are realized for the impact-ionization-engineered (I2E) APD structures [13,14], where the impact ionization process in the materials is localized with the narrowest bandgap in the M-layer, forming a hetero-junction with several different bandgap materials. In contrast to the I2E structure, our M-layer acts as a homo-junction, but with several charge layers and different doping densities to localize the avalanche process in the region which has the highest E-field.…”

Section: Device Structure and Fabricationmentioning

confidence: 85%

Avalanche Photodiodes with Dual Multiplication Layers for High-Speed and Wide Dynamic Range Performances

et al. 2021

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In this work, we demonstrate In0.52Al0.48As top/backside-illuminated avalanche photodiodes (APD) with dual multiplication layers for high-speed and wide dynamic range performances. Our fabricated top-illuminated APDs, with a partially depleted p-type In0.53Ga0.47As absorber layer and thin In0.52Al0.48As dual multiplication (M-) layer (60 and 88 nm), exhibit a wide optical-to-electrical bandwidth (16 GHz) with high responsivity (2.5 A/W) under strong light illumination (around 1 mW). The measured bias dependent 3-dB O-E bandwidth was pinned at 16 GHz without any serious degradation near the saturation current output. To further increase the speed, we downscaled the active diameter and adopted a back-side illuminated structure with flip-chip bonding for batter optical alignment tolerance. A significant improvement in maximum bandwidth was demonstrated (25 versus 18 GHz). On the other hand, we adopted a thick dual M-layer (200 and 300 nm) and 2 μm absorber layer in the APD design to circumvent the problem of serious bandwidth degradation under high gain (>100) and high-power operation which significantly enhanced the dynamic range. Due to dual M-layer, the carriers could be energized in the first M-layer then propagate to the second M-layer to trigger the avalanche process. In both cases, despite variation in thickness of the absorber and M-layer, the cascade avalanche process leads to values close to the ultra-high gain bandwidth product (GBP) of around 460 GHz with a responsivity of 0.4 and 1 A/W at unit gain for the thin and thick M-layer devices, respectively. We successfully achieved a good sensitivity of around −20.6 dBm optical modulation amplitude (OMA) at a data rate of 25.78 Gb/s, by packaging the fabricated APDs (thin dual M-layer (60 and 88 nm) version) with a 25 Gb/s trans-impedance amplifier in a 100 Gb/s ROSA package. The results show that, the incorporation of a dual multiplication (M) layer structure in the APD opens a new window to obtaining the higher GBP in order to meet the requirements for high-speed transmission without the need of further downscaling the multiplication layer.

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“…The noise of APDs with thin multiplication regions can be reduced even further by incorporating new materials and impact ionization engineering (I 2 E) with appropriately designed heterostructures. 81,[91][92][93][94][95][96][97] The I 2 E structures that have achieved the lowest excess noise, to date, utilize multiplication regions in which electrons are injected from a wide bandgap semiconductor into adjacent low bandgap material. Initial work that demonstrated the efficacy of this approach utilized the GaAs/AlxGa1-xAs material system.…”

Section: Heterojunction Apdsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Duan et al reported an SACM APD with a multiplication region consisting of unintentionally-doped layers of In0.52Al0.48As (wide bandgap) and In0.53Ga0.17Al0.3As (layer narrow bandgap), both with thickness of 80 nm grown by MBE on InP substrate. 96 The excess noise was characterized by keff = 0.12.…”

Section: Heterojunction Apdsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of Low-Noise Avalanche Photodetectors

Campbell

2022

IEEE J. Select. Topics Quantum Electron.

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High-speed and low-noise SACM avalanche photodiodes with an impact-ionization-engineered multiplication region

Cited by 44 publications

References 11 publications

Toward deterministic construction of low noise avalanche photodetector materials

Toward deterministic construction of low noise avalanche photodetector materials

Avalanche Photodiodes with Dual Multiplication Layers for High-Speed and Wide Dynamic Range Performances

Evolution of Low-Noise Avalanche Photodetectors

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