Avalanche noise characteristics of thin GaAs structures with distributed carrier generation [APDs]

Author

Li, Kim F. ; Ong, Duu S. ; David, John P R ; Tozer, Richard C. ; Rees, Graham J. ; Plimmer, Stephen A. ; Chang, Keng Y. ; Roberts, John S.

Author_Institution

Silicon Syst. Ltd., Dublin, Ireland

Volume

47

Issue

5

fYear

2000

fDate

5/1/2000 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

910

Lastpage

914

Abstract

It is known that both pure electron and pure hole injection into thin GaAs multiplication regions gives rise to avalanche multiplication with noise lower than predicted by the local noise model. In this paper, it is shown that the noise from multiplication initiated by carriers generated throughout a 0.1 μm avalanche region is also lower than predicted by the local model but higher than that obtained with pure injection of either carrier type. This behavior is due to the effects of nonlocal ionization brought about by the dead space; the minimum distance a carrier has to travel in the electric field to initiate an ionization event

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; avalanche breakdown; avalanche photodiodes; gallium arsenide; impact ionisation; semiconductor device breakdown; semiconductor device noise; 0.1 micron; APDs; GaAs; avalanche noise characteristics; dead space; distributed carrier generation; ionization event; multiplication noise; multiplication regions; nonlocal ionization; Absorption; Character generation; Charge carrier processes; Gallium arsenide; Ionization; Noise generators; Noise reduction; Photodetectors; Predictive models; Resonance;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9383

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/16.841220

Filename

841220