Abstract
Single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) in complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology have excellent timing resolution and are capable to detect single photons. The most important indicator for its sensitivity, photon-detection probability (PDP), defines the probability of a successful detection for a single incident photon. To optimize PDP is a cost- and time-consuming task due to the complicated and expensive CMOS process. In this work, we have developed a simulation procedure to predict the PDP without any fitting parameter. With the given process parameters, our method combines the process, the electrical, and the optical simulations in commercially available software and the calculation of breakdown trigger probability. The simulation results have been compared with the experimental data conducted in an 800-nm CMOS technology and obtained a good consistence at the wavelength longer than 600 nm. The possible reasons for the disagreement at the short wavelength have been discussed. Our work provides an effective way to optimize the PDP of a SPAD prior to its fabrication.
Highlights
Since the birth in the 1960s, single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) advanced with Si-based semiconductor technology [1,2]
Our work provides a feasible method to engineer and to optimize photon-detection probability (PDP) of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) SPADs which is crucial for enhancing the performance of these intriguing devices
Our SPADs were fabricated on a 6-inch wafer in the Episil 800-nm 40-V CMOS technology
Summary
Since the birth in the 1960s, single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) advanced with Si-based semiconductor technology [1,2]. Driven by fast-developing CMOS technology, detection of extremely weak light using SPADs has been a growing field in the past two decades [3,4,5,6]. Due to their single-photon sensitivity and excellent timing resolution, SPADs have been used in areas such as fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy [7,8,9,10], light detection and ranging (LiDAR) [11,12], radiometric temperature measurement [13], and time-gated Raman spectroscopy [14]. Pancheri et al compared two breakdown models to simulate bias-dependent PDP and an excellent consistence between their calculation and experiment was Sensors 2020, 20, 436; doi:10.3390/s20020436 www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
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