New method for the determination of non-quenching regime for silicon photomultipliers: A comparative study

In this paper a new method to determine the onset of the non-quenching condition in silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs), limiting the maximum overbias voltage, is demonstrated. In SiPMs both, photon detection efficiency and dark count rate (initiated by thermally generated electron-hole pairs), increase with increasing overbias voltage, making it necessary to find a compromise. New devices with lower dark count rates allow operation at higher overbias, now, an additional limitation comes from the ability of the resistor to quench the avalanche in a triggered diode. By determining the ratio of measured to calculated dark current, in which latter results from measuring the dark count rate, the start of the non-quenching regime can be identified by a disproportionately high increase of this ratio. First comparative studies of devices from Hamamatsu, MEPhI-Pulsar, STMicroelectronics, and the MPI semiconductor laboratory have been carried out. The results demonstrate the capability of this method to be used as an additional parameter for SiPM characterization.