A review of reliability evaluation techniques applied to ingaas pin photodiodes, germanium apds and ingaas apds

Abstract

AbstractThis paper reviews current life‐testing practices applied to photodiodes, illustrated with examples from some recent work on commercial components. A description is given of the types of photodiode tested, followed by an explanation of the basic princples of life‐testing. Comparisons of biasing methods are made and the difficulties of testing certain photodiodes are discussed. It is shown that it is impossible to demonstrate high reliability in fibred packages (without using a very large number of devices on test), because of life‐test temperature limitations. Similarly, it is difficult to demonstrate high reliability for germanium avalanche photodiodes (APDs). It is also shown that it can be very difficult to demonstrate high reliability in devices which reach wear‐out within short times at relatively low life‐test temperatures. Recent results are presented which demonstrate that planar PIN photodiodes are superior to mesa PINs, and that planar InGaAs APDs can have an acceptable reliability.