In this paper, we report the temperature stability and robust performance of our avalanche photodiode (APD), as well as the wide dynamic range and high gain linear mode detection ability of our receiver module prototype. The APDs have a low dark current and low-temperature coefficient of operating voltages from 19.2 to 22.7 mV/°C with a gain from 10 to 200. The high sensitivity APD- transimpedance amplifier (TIA) receiver module (TIA gain 22 kV/A) demonstrates measured NEP value of 29 fW/Hz0.5 when APD operates @M=130 under room temperature and predicted NEP value of 18 fW/Hz0.5@M=200 under 0°C for the 180 MHz of measurement bandwidth. This corresponds to a detection level of 16 and 10 photons respectively. The NEP value under 85°C is predicted as 77 fW/Hz0.5 when APD operates @M=60. This receiver module has a fast overload recovery of 1.39 μs under 51 kW/cm2 optical power illumination with 1045 kV/W of overall responsivity for APD-TIA. Our APDs also show robust performance of optically induced damage threshold of 40 MW/cm2 optical power illumination under circuitry protection and power dissipation limit of ~190 mW without circuitry protection.
Avalanche photodiodes (APD) can improve the signal to noise ratio in applications such as LIDAR, range finding and optical time domain reflectometry. However, APDs operating at eye-safe wavelengths around 1550 nm currently limit the sensitivity because the APDs’ impact ionization coefficients in the avalanche layers are too similar, leading to poor excess noise performance. The material AlGaAsSb has highly dissimilar impact ionization coefficients (with electrons dominating the avalanche gain) so is an excellent avalanche material for 1550 nm wavelength APDs. We previously reported a 1550 nm wavelength AlGaAsSb SAM APD with extremely low excess noise factors, 1.93 at a gain of 10 and 2.94 at a gain of 20. Using a more optimized design, we have now realized an AlGaAsSb SAM APD with a lower dark current (7 nA at a gain of 10 from a 230 μm diameter APD), a higher responsivity (0.97 A/W) and a lower excess noise (1.9 at a gain of 40), compared to our previous SAM APD. Noise-equivalent-power (NEP) measurements of our APD with a simple transimpedance amplifier circuit produced an NEP 12 times lower than a state-of-the-art APD under identical test conditions, confirming the advantage of low-noise AlGaAsSb SAM APDs.
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