Comprehensive Modeling and Characterization of Photon Detection Efficiency and Jitter Tail in Advanced SPAD Devices

Abstract

A new method to reliably simulate the PDE and jitter tail for realistic three-dimensional SPAD devices is presented. The simulation method is based on the use of electric field lines to mimic the carriers’ trajectories, and on one-dimensional models for avalanche breakdown probability and charges transport. This approach allows treating a three-dimensional problem as several one-dimensional problems along each field line. The original approach is applied to the McIntyre model for avalanche breakdown probability to calculate PDE, but also for jitter prediction using a dedicated advection-diffusion model. The results obtained numerically are compared with an extensive series of measurements and show a good agreement on a wide variety of device designs.

Keywords

• Avalanche breakdown probability
• breakdown voltage
• jitter
• photon detection efficiency (PDE)
• single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD)
• technology computer-aided design (TCAD)