Avalanche Photodiodes CAPD's)
Answers
Explanation:
An avalanche photodiode (APD) is a highly sensitive semiconductor electronic device that exploits the photoelectric effect to convert light to electricity. From a functional standpoint, they can be regarded as the semiconductor analog of photomultipliers. By applying a high reverse bias voltage (typically 100–200 V in silicon), APDs show an internal current gain effect (around 100) due to impact ionization (avalanche effect). However, some silicon APDs employ alternative doping and beveling techniques compared to traditional APDs that allow greater voltage to be applied (> 1500 V) before breakdown is reached and hence a greater operating gain (> 1000). In general, the higher the reverse voltage, the higher the gain. Among the various expressions for the APD multiplication factor (M), an instructive expression is given by the formula
{\displaystyle M={\frac {1}{1-\int _{0}^{L}\alpha (x)\,dx}},}
where L is the space-charge boundary for electrons, and {\displaystyle \alpha } is the multiplication coefficient for electrons (and holes). This coefficient has a strong dependence on the applied electric field strength, temperature, and doping profile. Since APD gain varies strongly with the applied reverse bias and temperature, it is necessary to control the reverse voltage to keep a stable gain. Avalanche photodiodes therefore are more sensitive compared to other semiconductor photodiodes.
If very high gain is needed (105 to 106), detectors related to APDs (single-photon avalanche diodes) can be used and operated with a reverse voltage above a typical APD's breakdown voltage. In this case, the photodetector needs to have its signal current limited and quickly diminished. Active and passive current-quenching techniques have been used for this purpose. SPADs that operate in this high-gain regime are sometimes referred to being in Geiger mode. This mode is particularly useful for single-photon detection, provided that the dark count event rate and afterpulsing probability are sufficiently low.
Typical applications for APDs are laser rangefinders, long-range fiber-optic telecommunication, and quantum sensing for control algorithms. New applications include positron emission tomography and particle physics. APD arrays are becoming commercially available, also lightning detection and optical SETI may be a future application.
APD applicability and usefulness depends on many parameters. Two of the larger factors are: quantum efficiency, which indicates how well incident optical photons are absorbed and then used to generate primary charge carriers; and total leakage current, which is the sum of the dark current and photocurrent and noise. Electronic dark-noise components are series and parallel noise. Series noise, which is the effect of shot noise, is basically proportional to the APD capacitance, while the parallel noise is associated with the fluctuations of the APD bulk and surface dark currents. Another noise source is the excess noise factor, ENF. It is a multiplicative correction applied to the noise that describes the increase in the statistical noise, specifically Poisson noise, due to the multiplication process. The ENF is defined for any device, such as photomultiplier tubes, silicon solid-state photomultipliers, and APDs, that multiplies a signal, and is sometimes referred to as "gain noise".
The noise term for an APD may also contain a Fano factor, which is a multiplicative correction applied to the Poisson noise associated with the conversion of the energy deposited by a charged particle to the electron-hole pairs, which is the signal before multiplication. The correction factor describes the decrease in the noise, relative to Poisson statistics, due to the uniformity of conversion process and the absence of, or weak coupling to, bath states in the conversion process. In other words, an "ideal" semiconductor would convert the energy of the charged particle into an exact and reproducible number of electron hole pairs to conserve energy; in reality, however, the energy deposited by the charged particle is divided into the generation of electron hole pairs, the generation of sound, the generation of heat, and the generation of damage or displacement. The existence of these other channels introduces a stochastic process, where the amount of energy deposited into any single process varies from event to event, even if the amount of energy deposited is the same.
The underlying physics associated with the excess noise factor (gain noise) and the Fano factor (conversion noise) is very different. However, the application of these factors as multiplicative corrections to the expected Poisson noise is similar