A CMOS STI-Bound Single-Photon Avalanche Diode With 27-ps Timing Resolution and a Reduced Diffusion Tail

Hsu, Mark J.; Esener, Sadik C.; Finkelstein, Hod

doi:10.1109/led.2009.2019974

Cited by 28 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Also, the quick restore narrows the probability of false positives during the recharge phase, when the excess voltage goes from zero to 0.9 V. Although the evaluated time resolution is larger than that reported in a 0.18 μm technology [22], it is enough for PET which is the targeted application. Thus we can use the parasitic capacitance of the starved inverter instead of the MOS capacitor, which has 60 μm 2 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

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Compact CMOS active quenching/recharge circuit for SPAD arrays

Vornicu

Carmona-Galán

Pérez-Verdú

et al. 2015

Circuit Theory & Apps

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Avalanche diodes operating in Geiger mode are able to detect single photon events. They can be employed to photon counting and time-of-flight estimation. In order to ensure proper operation of these devices, the avalanche current must be rapidly quenched, and, later on, the initial equilibrium must be restored. In this paper, we present an active quenching/recharge circuit specially designed to be integrated in the form of an array of single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) detectors. Active quenching and recharge provide benefits like an accurately controllable pulse width and afterpulsing reduction. In addition, this circuit yields one of the lowest reported area occupations and power consumptions. The quenching mechanism employed is based on a positive feedback loop that accelerates quenching right after sensing the avalanche current. We have employed a current starved inverter for the regulation of the hold-off time, which is more compact than other reported controllable delay implementations. This circuit has been fabricated in a standard 0.18 μm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The SPAD has a quasi-circular shape of 12 μm diameter active area. The fill factor is about 11%. The measured time resolution of the detector is 187 ps. The photon-detection efficiency (PDE) at 540 nm wavelength is about 5% at an excess voltage of 900 mV. The break-down voltage is 10.3 V. A dark count rate of 19 kHz is measured at room temperature. Worst case post-layout simulations show a 117 ps quenching and 280 ps restoring times. The dead time can be accurately tuned from 5 to 500 ns. The pulse-width jitter is below 1.8 ns when dead time is set to 40 ns.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…An alternative that can reduce the jitter even more is replacing the p-type structure with a SiO 2 shallow-trench-isolation guard-ring [22]. Further optimization of this structure with a technology-CAD tool leads to an improvement of the SPAD jitter.…”

Section: Active Quenching and Recharge Circuitmentioning

confidence: 99%

Compact CMOS active quenching/recharge circuit for SPAD arrays

Vornicu

Carmona-Galán

Pérez-Verdú

et al. 2015

Circuit Theory & Apps

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“…This was possibly caused by etching-induced crystal lattice defects and charge trapping associated with STI, as well as band-band tunnelling through the conventional p + /n-well diode junction. The same author group noted in (Hsu et al, 2009) that, despite the high dark count, the timing resolution characteristic was unspoiled by a diffusion tail due to reduced quasi-neutral field regions associated with implanted guard rings. Further, it was observed that increasing the active region diameter had no effect on the 27ps jitter, suggesting that these structures do not suffer from the lateral avalanche build up uncertainty.…”

Section: P-substratementioning

confidence: 97%

Avalanche Photodiodes in Submicron CMOS Technologies for High-Sensitivity Imaging

Betta¹,

Pancheri²,

Stoppa³

et al. 2011

Advances in Photodiodes

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“…Majority of papers devoted to APD are addressing the analysis of these characteristics. However, dynamic characteristics of APD [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32], especially based on GaN, are less examined. A pulsed response of APD shows [25,27,29] that the rise-time of the APD current is rather short, while the fall-time is longer by several orders of time-scales.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulation of dynamic characteristics of GaN p-i-n avalanche diode operating as particle detector with internal gain

Vyšniauskas¹,

Gaubas²

2018

physics

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An evolution of the transient characteristics of the GaN p-i-n diodes, operating in the avalanche mode and acting as particle sensors, has been simulated by using the Synopsys TCAD Sentaurus software package and the drift-diffusion approach. Profiling of the charge generation, recombination and drift-diffusion processes has been performed over a nanosecond time-scale with a precision of a few picoseconds and emulated through the photo-excitation of an excess carrier domain at different locations of the active volume of a diode. Shockley-Read-Hall (SRH), Auger and radiative recombination processes have been taken into account. Fast and slow components within a current transient have been analysed based on the consideration of the carrier spatial distribution at different instants of the avalanche process. The internal gain due to charge multiplication ensures the sufficient charge collection on electrodes of the relatively thin (5 µm) diode operating in the avalanche mode. It has been shown that the simulated evolution of the detector transient responses by employing the drift-diffusion approach reproduces properly the qualitative modifications of the main features of a detector with an internal gain, realized by induction of the avalanche processes governed by the applied external voltage.

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A CMOS STI-Bound Single-Photon Avalanche Diode With 27-ps Timing Resolution and a Reduced Diffusion Tail

Cited by 28 publications

References 18 publications

Compact CMOS active quenching/recharge circuit for SPAD arrays

Compact CMOS active quenching/recharge circuit for SPAD arrays

Avalanche Photodiodes in Submicron CMOS Technologies for High-Sensitivity Imaging

Simulation of dynamic characteristics of GaN p-i-n avalanche diode operating as particle detector with internal gain

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