On the Sensitivity of Electron-Injection Detectors at Low Light Level
We present the signal-to-noise performance of a short-wave infrared detector, which offers an internal avalanche-free gain. The detector is based on a similar mechanism as the heterojunction phototransistor and takes advantage of a type-II band alignment. Current devices demonstrate a noise-equivale...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
IEEE
2016-01-01
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| Series: | IEEE Photonics Journal |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7460223/ |
| Summary: | We present the signal-to-noise performance of a short-wave infrared detector, which offers an internal avalanche-free gain. The detector is based on a similar mechanism as the heterojunction phototransistor and takes advantage of a type-II band alignment. Current devices demonstrate a noise-equivalent sensitivity of ~670 photons at 260 K and over a linear dynamic range of 20 dB. While this level of sensitivity is about an order of magnitude better than an ideal p-i-n detector attached to the same low-noise amplifier, it was still limited by the amplifier noise (~2600 electrons root mean square) due to the insufficient device gain. Performance comparison with other SWIR detector technologies demonstrates that the so-called electron-injection detectors offer more than three orders of magnitude better noise-equivalent sensitivity compared with state-of-the-art phototransistors operating at similar temperature. |
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| ISSN: | 1943-0655 |