The effects of nonlocal impact ionization on the speed of avalanche photodiodes

Author

Hambleton, P.J. ; Ng, B.K. ; Plimmer, S.A. ; David, J.P.R. ; Rees, G.J.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electron. & Electr. Eng., Univ. of Sheffield, UK

Volume

50

Issue

2

fYear

2003

Firstpage

347

Lastpage

351

Abstract

The nonlocal enhancement in the velocities of charge carriers to ionization is shown to outweigh the opposing effects of dead space, increasing the avalanche speed of short avalanche photodiodes (APDs) over the predictions of a conventional local model which ignores both of these effects. The trends in the measured gain-bandwidth product of two short InAlAs APDs reported in the literature support this result. Relatively large speed benefits are predicted to result from further small reductions in the lengths of short multiplication regions.

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; Monte Carlo methods; aluminium compounds; avalanche photodiodes; frequency response; impact ionisation; indium compounds; semiconductor device models; InAlAs; InAlAs APDs; Monte Carlo modeling; avalanche speed; charge carrier velocity enhancement; dead space; frequency response; gain-bandwidth product; nonlocal enhancement; nonlocal impact ionization; short avalanche photodiodes; short multiplication regions; Avalanche photodiodes; Bandwidth; Charge carrier processes; Charge carriers; Delay; Electron mobility; Impact ionization; Predictive models; Region 1; Space technology;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9383

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TED.2002.808523

Filename

1196076