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 language | English (US) |
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Article number | 7460223 |
Journal | IEEE Photonics Journal |
Volume | 8 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 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