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

Remi Helleboid (1, 2, 3) , Denis Rideau (1) , Jeremy Grebot , Isobel Nicholson , Norbert Moussy (3) , Olivier Saxod (3) , Marie Basset (1) , Antonin Zimmer (1) , Bastien Mamdy (1) , Dominique Golanski (1) , Megan Agnew , Sara Pellegrini , Mathieu Sicre (1) , Christel Buj (1) , Guillaume Marchand (1) , Jérôme Saint-Martin (2) , Marco G. Pala (2) , Philippe Dollfus (2)

1 ST-CROLLES - STMicroelectronics [Crolles]
2 C2N - Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies
3 CEA-LETI - Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives - Laboratoire d'Electronique et de Technologie de l'Information

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)

Domains: Micro and nanotechnologies/Microelectronics; Mesoscopic Systems and Quantum Hall Effect [cond-mat.mes-hall]; Materials Science [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

Remi Helleboid, Denis Rideau, Jeremy Grebot, Isobel Nicholson, Norbert Moussy, et al.. Comprehensive Modeling and Characterization of Photon Detection Efficiency and Jitter Tail in Advanced SPAD Devices. IEEE Journal of the Electron Devices Society, 2022, 10, pp.584-592. ⟨10.1109/JEDS.2022.3168365⟩. ⟨hal-03794480⟩