On the Sensitivity of Electron-Injection Detectors at Low Light Level

Vala Fathipour*, Iman Hassani Nia, Alireza Bonakdar, Hooman Mohseni

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

15 Scopus citations

Abstract

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.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number7460223
JournalIEEE Photonics Journal
Volume8
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2016

Funding

This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Award ECCS-1310620 and the Army Research Office under Awards W911NF-13-1-0485, W911NF-11-1-0390, and W911NF-12-1-0324.

Keywords

  • Optoelectronic materials
  • applications
  • electron-injection detector
  • imaging
  • imaging systems
  • infrared
  • photodetector
  • phototransistor

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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