Valence band engineering of GaAsBi for low noise avalanche photodiodes

Yuchen Liu, Xin Yi, Nicholas J. Bailey, Zhize Zhou, Thomas B. O. Rockett, Leh W. Lim, Chee H. Tan, Robert D. Richards and John P. R. David ()
Additional contact information
Yuchen Liu: University of Sheffield
Xin Yi: University of Sheffield
Nicholas J. Bailey: University of Sheffield
Zhize Zhou: University of Sheffield
Thomas B. O. Rockett: University of Sheffield
Leh W. Lim: University of Sheffield
Chee H. Tan: University of Sheffield
Robert D. Richards: University of Sheffield
John P. R. David: University of Sheffield

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Avalanche Photodiodes (APDs) are key semiconductor components that amplify weak optical signals via the impact ionization process, but this process’ stochastic nature introduces ‘excess’ noise, limiting the useful signal to noise ratio (or sensitivity) that is practically achievable. The APD material’s electron and hole ionization coefficients (α and β respectively) are critical parameters in this regard, with very disparate values of α and β necessary to minimize this excess noise. Here, the analysis of thirteen complementary p-i-n/n-i-p diodes shows that alloying GaAs with ≤ 5.1 % Bi dramatically reduces β while leaving α virtually unchanged—enabling a 2 to 100-fold enhancement of the GaAs α/β ratio while extending the wavelength beyond 1.1 µm. Such a dramatic change in only β is unseen in any other dilute alloy and is attributed to the Bi-induced increase of the spin-orbit splitting energy (∆so). Valence band engineering in this way offers an attractive route to enable low noise semiconductor APDs to be developed.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24966-0 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-24966-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24966-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().