Low dark count rate 4H-SiC Geiger mode avalanche photodiodes operated under gated quenching at 325nm

Ariane L. Beck; Xiangyi Guo; Han-Din Liu; Aruna Ghatak-roy; Joe C. Campbell

doi:10.1117/12.685417

25 October 2006 Low dark count rate 4H-SiC Geiger mode avalanche photodiodes operated under gated quenching at 325nm

Ariane L. Beck, Xiangyi Guo, Han-Din Liu, Aruna Ghatak-roy, Joe C. Campbell

Proceedings Volume 6372, Advanced Photon Counting Techniques; 63720O (2006) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.685417
Event: Optics East 2006, 2006, Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Abstract

The detection of light at ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths is important for many military, medical and environmental applications. Applications such as biological agent detection and non-line-of-sight communications require the detection of scattered UV light. Currently, photomultiplier tubes operated as single photon counters are used to detect these low light levels, but they have many unfavorable characteristics for such applications. SiC based avalanche photodiodes (APDs) operated in Geiger mode could potentially meet the needs of these applications. Our first results, using SiC Geiger mode single photon counting avalanche photodiodes (SPADs), showed prohibitively high dark counts, due to a large tunneling current component in the multiplied dark current. Here we show the results of two p-i-n structures with 260μm and 480μm i-regions, which reduced the primary dark current by two orders of magnitude, operated under gated quenching conditions at 325nm. The lower dark current resulted in a dark count rate of 28kHz at 3.6% single photon detection efficiency (SPDE) in a 100μm diameter device. This is a three order reduction in the dark count rate over our previous results using a p-n junction SPAD.

Citation Download Citation

Ariane L. Beck, Xiangyi Guo, Han-Din Liu, Aruna Ghatak-roy, and Joe C. Campbell "Low dark count rate 4H-SiC Geiger mode avalanche photodiodes operated under gated quenching at 325nm", Proc. SPIE 6372, Advanced Photon Counting Techniques, 63720O (25 October 2006); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.685417

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