AlInAsSb/GaSb staircase avalanche photodiode

作者：Ren Min^*; Maddox Scott; Chen Yaojia; Woodson Madison; Campbell Joe C; Bank Seth

来源：Applied Physics Letters, 2016, 108(8): 081101.

DOI：10.1063/1.4942370

Over 30 years ago, Capasso and co-workers [IEEE Trans. Electron Devices 30, 381 (1982)] proposed the staircase avalanche photodetector (APD) as a solid-state analog of the photomultiplier tube. In this structure, electron multiplication occurs deterministically at steps in the conduction band profile, which function as the dynodes of a photomultiplier tube, leading to low excess multiplication noise. Unlike traditional APDs, the origin of staircase gain is band engineering rather than large applied electric fields. Unfortunately, the materials available at the time, principally AlxGa1-xAs/GaAs, did not offer sufficiently large conduction band offsets and energy separations between the direct and indirect valleys to realize the full potential of the staircase gain mechanism. Here, we report a true staircase APD operation using alloys of a rather underexplored material, AlxIn1-xAsySb1-y, lattice-matched to GaSb. Single step "staircase" devices exhibited a constant gain of similar to 2x, over a broad range of applied bias, operating temperature, and excitation wave-lengths/intensities, consistent with Monte Carlo calculations.

• 出版日期2016-2-22