Quenching Statistics of Silicon Single Photon Avalanche Diodes

Thibauld Cazimajou , Marco G. Pala (1) , Jerome Saint-Martin , Remi Helleboid , Jeremy Grebot , Denis Rideau , Philippe Dollfus

1 C2N - Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies

The statistical behavior of silicon-based single-photon-avalanche-diodes (SPADs) is investigated by using self-consistent 3-D Monte Carlo simulations. The coupling of Poisson and Boltzmann transport equations allows us to go beyond the analysis of avalanche breakdown and its timing and to extend the investigation to the quenching of the photodetector circuit. We find out that the quenching of SPADs is probabilistic and strongly depends on the surrounding circuit, in particular on the socalled quenching resistance. Independently of the SPAD deadtime, it appears that the extinction time needed to suppress any avalanche event may vary over a very large range.

Domaines: Micro et nanotechnologies/Microélectronique; Systèmes mésoscopiques et effet Hall quantique [cond-mat.mes-hall]; Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

Thibauld Cazimajou, Marco G. Pala, Jerome Saint-Martin, Remi Helleboid, Jeremy Grebot, et al.. Quenching Statistics of Silicon Single Photon Avalanche Diodes. IEEE Journal of the Electron Devices Society, 2021, pp.1-1. ⟨10.1109/JEDS.2021.3127013⟩. ⟨hal-03439663⟩