Fast Sensing and Quenching of CMOS SPADs for Minimal Afterpulsing Effects

Bronzi, Danilo; Tisa, Simone; Villa, Federica; Bellisai, S.; Tosi, Alberto; Zappa, Franco

doi:10.1109/lpt.2013.2251621

Cited by 95 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…An integrated quenching and active reset circuit is connected to the SPAD's anode, because the latter shows lower parasitic capacitance compared to cathode, thus resulting in faster avalanche quenching and lower timing jitter [13]. …”

Section: Cmos Spadmentioning

confidence: 99%

High linearity SPAD and TDC array for TCSPC and 3D ranging applications

Villa

Lussana

Bronzi

et al. 2015

Quantum Sensing and Nanophotonic Devices XII

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An array of 32x32 Single-Photon Avalanche-Diodes (SPADs) and Time-to-Digital Converters (TDCs) has been fabricated in a 0.35 µm automotive-certified CMOS technology. The overall dimension of the chip is 9x9 mm 2 . Each pixel is able to detect photons in the 300 nm -900 nm wavelength range with a fill-factor of 3.14% and either to count them or to time stamp their arrival time. In photon-counting mode an in-pixel 6-bit counter provides photon-numberresolved intensity movies at 100 kfps, whereas in photon-timing mode the 10-bit in-pixel TDC provides time-resolved maps (Time-Correlated Single-Photon Counting measurements) or 3D depth-resolved (through direct time-of-flight technique) images and movies, with 312 ps resolution. The photodetector is a 30 µm diameter SPAD with low Dark Count Rate (120 cps at room temperature, 3% hot-pixels) and 55% peak Photon Detection Efficiency (PDE) at 450 nm. The TDC has a 6-bit counter and a 4-bit fine interpolator, based on a Delay Locked Loop (DLL) line, which makes the TDC insensitive to process, voltage, and temperature drifts. The implemented sliding-scale technique improves linearity, giving 2% LSB DNL and 10% LSB INL. The single-shot precision is 260 ps rms, comprising SPAD, TDC and driving board jitter. Both optical and electrical crosstalk among SPADs and TDCs are negligible. 2D fast movies and 3D reconstructions with centimeter resolution are reported.

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Section: Cmos Spadmentioning

confidence: 99%

High linearity SPAD and TDC array for TCSPC and 3D ranging applications

Villa

Lussana

Bronzi

et al. 2015

Quantum Sensing and Nanophotonic Devices XII

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“…Besides the main advantages of compact dimension and cost reduction, an integrated quenching circuit brings other important improvements to SPAD performance: the lag in avalanche sensing is reduced and the current flowing through the detector is quickly quenched, thus lowering the afterpulsing probability [8]. Fig.…”

Section: Pixel Architecturementioning

confidence: 99%

Low-Cost and Compact Single-Photon Counter Based on a CMOS SPAD Smart Pixel

Boso

Buttafava

Villa

et al. 2015

IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett.

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> Low-cost and compact single-photon counter based on a CMOS SPAD smart pixel < 1  Abstract-We present a single-photon counter based on a silicon Single-Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) fabricated in a 0.35 µm CMOS technology. The detector is monolithically integrated with a front-end circuit and a digital pulse output driver. External components are kept to a minimum and the resulting instrument is low-cost, low-power and compact, being housed into an industry-standard 1-inch aluminum optical mounting tube. It features a maximum power consumption of just 250 mW from an USB link. The embedded 50 µm diameter SPAD has high photon detection efficiency in the visible range (55 % at 420 nm), low noise (< 100 cps at room temperature), low timing jitter (< 100 ps full-width at half maximum), and very low afterpulsing probability (down to 1 % with 60 ns hold-off time). The high performance, compactness and low cost enable many unexplored applications in life sciences, personal health care, industrial quality check, quantum physics and others, where it is required to count single photons and to measure their arrival time.Index Terms -photodetector, single-photon avalanche diode, SPAD, photon counting, near-infrared detector.

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“…Figure 6 shows the structure of one macro-pixel and the layout of the whole digital SiPM. Inside each microcell, the anode of SPAD is connected to a variable-load quenching circuit [16] to active quench and recharge the SPAD. Each microcell provides three outputs: one digital voltage output connected in parallel to other microcells, that could go to external TDC [17] for photon arrival time resolving applications or to external counter for photon counting applications; one analog output provides current signal, that gives directly information on simultaneously firing microcells inside each macropixel; one digital output to provide the state of one single microcell, which will be registered by a one-bit memory for photon position resolving applications.…”

Section: Digital Sipmsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fully CMOS analog and digital SiPMs

et al. 2015

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Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) are emerging single photon detectors used in many applications requiring large active area, photon-number resolving capability and immunity to magnetic fields. We present three families of analog SiPM fabricated in a reliable and cost-effective fully standard planar CMOS technology with a total photosensitive area of 1x1 mm 2 . These three families have different active areas with fill-factors (21%, 58.3%, 73.7%) comparable to those of commercial SiPM, which are developed in vertical (current flow) custom technologies. The peak photon detection efficiency in the near-UV tops at 38% (fill-factor included) comparable to commercial custom-process ones and dark count rate density is just a little higher than the best-in-class commercial analog SiPMs. Thanks to the CMOS processing, these new SiPMs can be integrated together with active components and electronics both within the microcell and onchip, in order to act at the microcell level or to perform global pre-processing. We also report CMOS digital SiPMs in the same standard CMOS technology, based on microcells with digitalized processing, all integrated on-chip. This CMOS digital SiPMs has four 32x1 cells (128 microcells), each consisting of SPAD, active quenching circuit with adjustable dead time, digital control (to switch off noisy SPADs and readout position of detected photons), and fast trigger output signal. The achieved 20% fill-factor is still very good.

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Fast Sensing and Quenching of CMOS SPADs for Minimal Afterpulsing Effects

Cited by 95 publications

References 16 publications

High linearity SPAD and TDC array for TCSPC and 3D ranging applications

High linearity SPAD and TDC array for TCSPC and 3D ranging applications

Low-Cost and Compact Single-Photon Counter Based on a CMOS SPAD Smart Pixel

Fully CMOS analog and digital SiPMs

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