al$_{\bf 0.52}$in$_{\bf 0.48}$p sam-apd as a blue-green detector
TRANSCRIPT
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Abstract— We demonstrate an Al0.52In0.48P homo-junction
Separate Absorption Multiplication Avalanche Photodiode
(SAM-APD) as a detector with narrow spectral response in the
blue-green part of the optical spectrum. Due to its wide band-gap,
this device has a dark current density of < 8 nA cm-2 at 99.9% of
the breakdown voltage at room temperature. This device has a
peak responsivity at 483 nm of 0.15 A/W when punched-through
and is capable of an avalanche gain higher than 100.
Index Terms—Optical communication, narrow band detector,
blue detector, avalanche photodiode
I. INTRODUCTION
HERE is an increasing interest in detectors for optical
communication systems recently for underwater
applications as they offer higher data bandwidth. High speed
data transmission of 1 Gbps over 50 m can be achieved
underwater by using a 532 nm laser [1] whereas conventional
acoustic systems can only give ~10 kbps [2] over a similar
distance. Unlike in fiber based communication systems, these
detectors may have to operate in the presence of extraneous
light sources such as sunlight and consequently may suffer
from a high background noise. To reduce such interference, the
detector should ideally only respond to the wavelength of
interest by having a narrow spectral response in the blue-green
part of the optical spectrum around 480 nm where seawater has
the least optical attenuation varying from < -0.1 dB/m to > -3.5
dB/m depending on its turbidity [2]. To maximize the range of
operation, a high sensitivity detector is required. Silicon is
usually the best choice for photodiode in this wavelength range
but its wide spectral response range makes it very susceptible to
any background illumination, necessitating the use of filters.
Although optical band-pass filters are available, they add cost
and complexity to the optical receiver. Furthermore, the filter
central wavelength varies with the incident beam angle and
therefore attenuates the signal power.
Al0.52In0.48P (AlInP thereafter) is the widest bandgap material
that can be grown lattice-matched on a GaAs substrate. Work
by Zhang et al. showed that a GaInP/AlInP PIN structure can
respond to ~ 480 nm with a narrow spectral response and a
quantum efficiency of 43 % in addition to negligible reverse
dark current density of < 42 nA∙cm-2
[3]. By utilizing the band
Manuscript submitted Januray 20, 2014. This work was supported by the
U.K. Ministry of Defense S&T Program via Defense Science and Technology
Program under Grant CDE 24907. J. S. Cheong, J. S. Ng, A. B. Krysa and J. P. R. David are with the
Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Sheffield,
Mappin Street, Sheffield S1 3JD, U.K. (e-mail: [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]).
J. S. L. Ong is with the Microelectronic Engineering Department, University
of Malaya Perlis, Pauh Putra Campus, 02600 Arau, Perlis, Malaysia. (email: [email protected]).
discontinuities at the Ga0.52In0.48P-Al0.52In0.48P interface [4],
photocurrent due to short wavelength light is suppressed. The
hetero-junction capping layer behaves similarly to that of a
long-pass optical filter, resulting in a detector with a relatively
narrow spectral full-width-half-maximum (FWHM) of 45 nm.
An alternative way of removing the carriers created by short
wavelength light is to ensure that they recombine before they
reach the depletion region. This requires materials with short
minority carriers’ diffusion lengths. Potential materials are
aluminum-based alloy semiconductors such as AlGaAs and
AlGaInP, which high-quality wafer growth can be challenging
due to the strong affinity between aluminum and oxygen.
Residual oxygen during growth introduces deep-level traps and
reduces the minority carrier lifetime in aluminum containing
alloys [5]–[6]. This reduces the diffusion length significantly
and thereby potentially allows a material to have a narrow
spectral FWHM intrinsically without having a hetero-junction
interface. Unfortunately, the narrow spectral response also
results in a decrease in the peak responsivity. Avalanche
photodiodes (APDs) utilize the impact ionization process to
provide a gain mechanism and can provide an increase in
sensitivity, compensating for any reduction in responsivity.
Ong et al. [7] showed that homo-junction AlInP PINs retain a
low dark current density of < 6 nA∙cm-2
even at high reverse
bias up to 95% of breakdown voltage and therefore the material
may be used in an APD to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of a
photodiode. Since the electron ionization coefficient (α) is
larger than the hole ionization coefficient (β), electrons should
initiate the multiplication process for optimum noise
performance.
In this work we demonstrate a homo-junction AlInP based
APD that provides an inherently narrow FWHM centered at
around 480 nm and is capable of high gain.
II. DEVICE DESIGN, GROWTH & FABRICATION
To simulate the spectral response and FWHM of the AlInP
SAM-APD, the electron diffusion length (Le) and absorption
coefficient at 300 K in AlInP is required. To obtain these
parameters, homo-junction AlInP 1.0 µm PIN with 1.0 µm p+
cladding thickness was grown on a 10 degree off-axis GaAs
substrate by Metal Organic Vapour Phase Epitaxy (MOVPE)
and were fabricated using standard lithography process. The p+
cladding was chemically dry etched to thicknesses of 0.92, 0.43
and 0.26 µm with Inductive Coupled Plasma (ICP) and
subsequently the samples were wet-etched to form mesa diodes
of 25 – 200 µm radii.
Photocurrent measurements as a function of reverse bias
were performed on these devices using 442 nm illumination.
The increment of primary photocurrent was then simulated
using the analytical solutions [8] based on the current
continuity equation. Using an absorption coefficient (σ) at 442
Al0.52In0.48P SAM-APD as a Blue-Green Detector
J. S. Cheong, J. S. L. Ong, J. S. Ng, Member, IEEE, A. B. Krysa and J. P. R. David, Fellow, IEEE
T
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nm of 1 × 105 cm
-1 [9] and electron mobility (µe) of 100 cm
2/V.s
[10], Le was determined to be 0.14 µm, assuming a surface
recombination velocity (Se) of 1 × 105 cm/s similar to that of
GaAs [11]. Due to the presence of aluminum, the Se of AlInP
should be significantly higher than GaAs but the simulated
primary photocurrent showed insignificant change when Se was
increased from this nominal value, suggesting that Le is
relatively insensitive to this parameter.
To obtain the absorption coefficient, the spectral response of
the PIN diodes was then measured using a white light source
and a grating monochromator. As most of the absorption
process occurs in the p+ cladding, the absorption coefficient
was assumed to be similar regardless of the dopant type. The
absorption coefficient over the 400 – 600 nm wavelength range
was then deduced by modeling the spectral response which is
shown in Fig. 1a. The energy gap at Γ (EΓ) and X (EX) points of
the Brillouin zone of AlInP were estimated from the absorption
coefficients [12, 13], to give 2.31 eV and 2.60 eV respectively.
These values are consistent with those suggested by several
groups with values of EΓ and EX of 2.33 eV and 2.45- 2.63 eV
respectively at 300 K [14, 15, 16, 17]. The absorption
coefficients for wavelengths shorter than 470 nm increase more
rapidly since photon-absorption processes occur at the Γ point
of the Brillouin zone.
A simple AlInP PIN diode with a thick absorption region will
make a poor APD as besides having a large operating voltage, it
may suffer from poor noise performance due to both electrons
and holes initiating the multiplication process. To overcome
these problems, we propose an AlInP homo-junction
Separate-Absorption-Multiplication Avalanche Photodiode
(SAM-APD) in which the device electric field profile can be
tailored. A SAM-APD typically has a thin multiplication region
at high field and a thick absorption region at low field, ensuring
a relatively low operating voltage and high quantum efficiency
respectively. A 0.2 µm thick avalanche region AlInP PIN diode
has been reported with negligible tunneling current up to
breakdown voltage [7] so this was chosen as the multiplication
region thickness. A 1.0 µm thick un-doped absorption region
provides reasonable quantum efficiency at the desired peak
response wavelength of 480 nm and the electric fields in these
two regions are bridged by a 0.175 µm thick charge sheet layer
with doping density of 3 × 1017
cm-3
such that the electric field
in the multiplication region does not breakdown before
punch-through while ensuring a low electric field of ~ 100
kV/cm across the absorption region. Assuming that the charge
sheet is sufficiently thin such that there is no multiplication
occurring in that region, the breakdown field of this SAM-APD
is similar to that of a 0.2 µm PIN [7] and therefore such a
structure should give a breakdown voltage of ~ -40 V.
The modeling result in Fig. 1b shows that a narrow spectral
FWHM of 21 nm can be achieved from a homo-junction AlInP
SAM-APD with an active region thickness of 1.4 µm (the total
thickness of absorption region, charge sheet and multiplication
region) by increasing the p+ cladding thickness albeit at the
expense of device responsivity. The peak response wavelength
Fig. 1a. Absorption coefficients deduced by AlInP PINs.
Fig. 1b. Simulated spectral responses of fully depleted AlInP SAM-APD with
p+ cladding thicknesses of 0.2, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 µm. Symbols shows experimental (circle) and simulation (rectangle) results of a 1.0 µm PIN.
Fig. 3. Structure detail and electric field profile of a fully depleted
(punch-through) AlInP SAM-APD.
Fig. 2. The responsivities at 480 nm and spectral FWHM of AlInP SAM-APD
(solid lines) with increasing p+ cladding thickness. Also shown the
multiplication required to achieve responsivity of 10 A/W (symbol with line).
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also shifts slightly to longer wavelength with increasing
cladding thickness since more carriers created at shorter
wavelengths recombine and are unable to contribute to the
photocurrent. Fig. 1b shows the responsivity roll-off at shorter
wavelengths improves with p+ cladding thickness and the
FWHM saturates at 21 nm for a 1 µm thickness as illustrated in
Fig. 2. However this also results in reduced peak responsivity
and consequently a higher multiplication gain is therefore
required to achieve a given responsivity, arbitrarily chosen to
be 10 A/W in Fig. 2. To have the narrowest FWHM of 21 nm,
1.0 µm p+ cladding was determined as the optimum thickness
with peak response wavelength at 480 nm in addition of
ensuring > 97 % of electrons generated in the p+ and absorption
region at such wavelength. The designed SAM-APD has the
structure as shown in Fig. 3. A highly doped, thin GaAs cap
was deposited on top of the p+-cladding to ensure a good ohmic
contact.
The SAM-APD was grown and fabricated using the same
growth and fabrication technique as that of the PIN diode. To
ensure the incident light is only absorbed by the AlInP p+
cladding layer, the thin GaAs cap is etched off in the central
window region as shown in Fig. 3 before forming mesa diodes.
III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS & ANALYSIS
Capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurements were performed to
obtain the doping densities and thicknesses of the absorption
region, charge sheet and multiplication region. This
information was subsequently corroborated by Secondary Ion
Mass Spectroscopy (SIMS) measurements. Using the doping
profile obtained from C-V and SIMS, good agreement was
obtained between experimental C-V and modeling results of the
structure from the SIMS measurement as shown in Fig. 4a. Due
to the dopant diffusion from the charge sheet, the absorption
region width is reduced to 0.5 µm with a 1.0 µm almost
uniformly doped charge sheet and multiplication region of 6 ×
1016
cm-3
which results in a higher punch-through and
breakdown voltage. The simulated electric field profiles of the
diode at breakdown voltage (-66.5 V) illustrated in Fig. 4b
using the extracted parameters is similar to that of a one-sided
p-n junction. The departure of the doping profile from the
intended design due to dopant diffusion however, should not
alter the primary spectral response since the active regions
thicknesses are similar.
I-V measurements were performed on the devices in dark
condition. The reverse I-V in Fig. 5a shows an abrupt
breakdown voltage of -66.5 V without the presence of
tunneling current despite a peak breakdown electric field
exceeding 1000 kV/cm.
It is important to estimate the primary photocurrent to
calculate the quantum efficiency at unity gain and also the gain
of the APD. Plimmer et al. [18] showed the local model of
impact ionization is able to predict the gain of a rapidly varying
electric field and using the reported ionization coefficients [7],
the gain (M) of the SAM-APD is simulated in Fig. 5b. The
predicted breakdown voltage obtained by extrapolating 1/M(V)
to zero agrees well with the experimental breakdown voltage
value.
Fig. 5b shows the responsivity of the same device with 480
nm illumination as a function of reverse bias. Using the gain
predicted by the local model, the modeled responsivity-voltage
(R-V) curve shows good agreement with the experimental
results and a gain of 167 is obtained at -65.9 V. The dark
current density of 5 nA cm-2
in our devices at a gain of 100 was
limited by the measurement system noise floor and compares
very favorably with the performance of previously grown
AlInP PIN [3] at low bias, an AlInP PIN (95% of breakdown
voltage) [7], a commercial gallium phosphide photodiode (< 70
nA cm-2
at 95% of breakdown voltage) [19] and a good
commercial silicon APD (28 nA cm-2
at a gain of 100) [20].
Fig. 6 shows that the spectral response of the SAM-APD
obtained in the same manner as for the PIN diodes is
independent of applied voltage up to near breakdown, giving a
peak response wavelength at 482 nm with a FWHM of 22 nm,
which is narrower than that of previous work [3] and a
Hamamatsu S5973-02 silicon photodiode [21]. Using the
doping densities and thicknesses extracted from the earlier C-V
measurements, the simulated spectral response has a good
agreement with experimental data at 0V. Excellent agreement
at higher biases up to -65.9 V can also be obtained by including
the effect of avalanche multiplication as shown in Fig. 5b. The
measured responsivity and external quantum efficiency at 483
nm is 0.15 A/W and 38 % respectively at the device
Fig. 4b. Simulated electric field profiles of design (solid line) and grown
(dashed line) structures at breakdown voltage.
Fig. 4a. Modelled C-V of designed (solid line) and grown (dashed line) 200
µm devices. Symbols are experimental obtained data, assuming uniform
doping densities in all regions.
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punch-through voltage of -45 V. This relatively low value of
responsivity is partly due to the lack of an anti-reflection
coating but primarily due to the poor diffusion length of
minority carriers in the p+ AlInP layer. A peak responsivity of
18.0 A/W is achieved at -65.9 V without affecting the FWHM
and it is two orders of magnitude higher than the previous work
[3] due to the presence of avalanche gain.
IV. CONCLUSION
We have demonstrated the successful growth of a highly
sensitive homo-junction AlInP SAM-APD with extremely low
dark current, narrow spectral response FWHM and peak
response near to the desired wavelength of 480 nm. Although
the charge sheet thickness widens due to the dopant diffusion,
the responsivity and dark current of the devices are not affected.
Using the absorption coefficients and ionization coefficients
derived from the PINs, the spectral response and multiplication
of the APD is accurately predicted. This material system
therefore may form the basis of detectors for underwater
communication systems.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author would like to thank UK MOD S&T Programme
for funding this work through the Futures and Innovation
Domain of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory
(DSTL).
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Fig. 5a. Dark current of an AlInP SAM-APD device and the measured photocurrent illuminated with 480 nm of light.
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from local model (dashed line).
1077-260X (c) 2013 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. Seehttp://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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Jeng Shiuh Cheong received the B.Eng degree in electrical
engineering and electronics from University of Tenaga
Nasional, Kajang, Malaysia, in 2011. He is currently
working toward the Ph.D. degree in electronic and electrical
engineering at the University of Sheffield, Sheffield, U.K.
His research is focused on experimental and theoretical
investigation of impact ionization in avalanche photodiodes
for underwater application.
Siok Lan Ong received her Ph.D degree from the University
of Sheffield, Sheffield, U.K. in 2013 in Electronic and
Electrical Engineering on the subject of impact ionization on
AlInP. She is presently a senior lecturer at University of
Malaysia Perlis, Arau, Malaysia.
Jo Shien Ng (M’99) received the B.Eng and Ph.D degrees
from University of Sheffield, Sheffield, U.K. in 1999 and
2003, respectively, in electronic and electrical engineering.
From 2003 and 2006, she was with the University of Sheffield
and was responsible for characterization within the National
Centre for III-V Technologies.
She became a Royal Society University Research Fellow in October 2006,
and her research interests include X-ray detectors, avalanche photodiodes,
Geiger-mode avalanche photodiodes, and material characterization.
Andrey B. Krysa graduated from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, Moscow, Russia, in 1990. He received the
Ph.D. degree in solid state physics from the Lebedev Physical
Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, in 1997. He joined the EPSRC National Centre for III–V
Technologies, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, U.K., in 2001.
Since that, he has been engaged in the MOVPE of the Group III phosphides and arsenides.
John P. R. David (SM’96–F’12) received the B.Eng. and
Ph.D. degrees in Electronic Engineering from The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, U.K.
In 1985, he joined the Central Facility for III-V
Semiconductors, Sheffield, where he was responsible for the characterization activity. From 2001-2002, he was with
Marconi Optical Components (now Bookham
Technologies). He is currently a Professor in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, The University of Sheffield and was
the Head of Department from 2009-2013. Prof. David was an IEEE Lasers and
Electro Optics Society Distinguished Lecturer from 2002 to 2004. His current research interests include III-V semiconductor characterisation and impact
ionization in analog and single photon avalanche photodiodes.