Triple epitaxial single‐photon avalanche diode for multichannel timing applications

Abstract

In the last years, custom-technology single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) have demonstrated remarkable performance, thanks to the fine engineering process performed on the electric field profile. However, the integration of custom SPADs in detector arrays often conflicts with the low-threshold current sensing that is mandatory to extract the timing information. A new custom-technology SPAD is introduced, that exploits an extra epitaxial layer in order to reduce the capacitive coupling between the anode and the chip substrate. The new detector shows a state-of-the-art timing jitter of 34 ps full width at half maximum and a weak dependence on the detection threshold, even when the substrate is kept at a fixed voltage, as required by the implementation of multichannel photon timing systems.