Since avalanche gain and breakdown voltage in most semiconductor materials change with temperature, instruments utilizing Avalanche Photodiodes (APDs) for their avalanche gains need to incorporate either temperature stabilization or voltage adjustment in the APD operation circuits. In this work we evaluated the temperature and temporal stability of avalanche gain in Al0.85Ga0.15As0.56Sb0.44, a ...

Time of flight laser range finding, scanning video imaging and deep space communications are three applications requiring very low noise optical receivers in order to achieve detection of fast and weak optical signal. Avalanche photodiode is the detector of choice for its high quantum efficiency, compact size and reduced electronics complexity. Optimal operating condition in terms of gain and t...

A compact and flexible circuit for operating avalanche photodiodes in Geiger mode was designed, fabricated, and tested. A new voltage driver stage, based on fast n-channel double-diffused metal– oxide–semiconductor ~DMOS! transistors in a bootstrap configuration, makes it possible to obtain quenching pulses up to 25 V amplitude and fast active reset of the detector. At 20 V excess bias voltage ...

A 32 by 32 array of packaged 100 μm Geiger-mode avalanche photodiodes were tested and characterized. A breakdown voltage of 32 V was measured; at or just above this voltage is where the device should be biased in order to operate in Geiger-mode. The ideal region of the forward biased IV curve resulted in an ideality factor of 1.0 and no recombination/generation region. In addition, IDL code was...

Abstract AlGaAsSb attracts significant interest for near‐infrared avalanche photodiodes (APD). The authors report a two‐order reduction in the dark current and six‐time enhancement of gain random alloy (RA) APD that is surface passivated by conformal coating Al 2 O 3 via atomic layer deposition (ALD). currents APDs with 400‐µm diameter (dry etched) at 90% breakdown voltage (0.9 V br ) are (5.5 ...