Plasmonic field confinement for separate absorption-multiplication in InGaAs nanopillar avalanche photodiodes

Abstract

Avalanche photodiodes (APDs) are essential components in quantum key distribution systems and active imaging systems requiring both ultrafast response time to measure photon time of flight and high gain to detect low photon flux. The internal gain of an APD can improve system signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Excess noise is typically kept low through the selection of material with intrinsically low excess noise, using separate-absorption-multiplication (SAM) heterostructures, or taking advantage of the dead-space effect using thin multiplication regions. In this work we demonstrate the first measurement of excess noise and gain-bandwidth product in III–V nanopillars exhibiting substantially lower excess noise factors compared to bulk and gain-bandwidth products greater than 200 GHz. The nanopillar optical antenna avalanche detector (NOAAD) architecture is utilized for spatially separating the absorption region from the avalanche region via the NOA resulting in single carrier injection without the use of a traditional SAM heterostructure.

Enhanced Carrier Multiplication in InAs Quantum Dots for Bulk Avalanche Photodetector Applications

“…Nanoscale semiconductor structures have exhibited promising carrier multiplication capability for avalanche detector applications. Efficient photocurrent gain ranging from 10 2 to 10 4 due to carrier impact ionization in nanoscale p‐n diodes consisting of silicon, silicon‐cadmium sulfide, and InP/InAsP 1D nanowires and InGaAs nanopillars has been successfully demonstrated. Meanwhile, high‐efficiency carrier multiplication in carbon nanotube, PbSe, InP, and InAs nanocrystal quantum dots (QDs) due to multiple electron–hole pair generation has also been observed, in which a photon with energy greater than two times the band gap generates an average of more than one exciton, implying a drastic enhancement of conversion efficiency in nano solar cells.…”

Overcoming the Bandwidth-Quantum Efficiency Trade-Off in Conventional Photodetectors

“…Compared with using bare core nanowires, higher response was achieved in MSM PDs using Schottky-contacted GaAs/AlGaAs core/ shell nanowires [81]. In [82], nanopillar-based APDs have exhibited a 200-GHz gain bandwidth product at 1060-nm illumination.…”

Tapered InP nanowire arrays for efficient broadband high-speed single-photon detection

“…This is because a reduction in the multiplication volume results in a reduction in the effective ionization rate ratio, keff, of the microstructure as compared to the bulk material. Due to their nanoscale volume the extracted in measurements of nanowire avalanche detectors can be significantly smaller than that found in the bulk material 41,42 . Furthermore, by employing a highspeed transmission line electrode design to contact the array, we expect this temporal response can be significantly improved.…”