Low noise Al0.85Ga0.15As0.56Sb0.44 avalanche photodiodes on InP substrates

We report on the demonstration of Al0.85Ga0.15As0.56Sb0.44 (hereafter, AlGaAsSb) avalanche photodiodes (APDs) with a 1000nm-thick multiplication layer. Such a thick AlGaAsSb device was grown by a digital alloy technique to avoid phase separation. The current-voltage measurements under dark and illumination conditions were performed to determine gain for the AlGaAsSb APDs. The highest gain was similar to 42, and the avalanche initiation occurred at 21.6V. The breakdown voltage was found to be around -53V. The measured dark current densities of bulk and surface components were 6.0 mu A/cm(2) and 0.23 mu A/cm, respectively. These values are about two orders of magnitude lower than those for previously reported 1550nm-thick AlAs0.56Sb0.44 APDs [Yi et al., Nat. Photonics 13, 683 (2019)]. Excess noise measurements showed that the AlGaAsSb APD has a low k of 0.01 (the ratio of electron and hole impact ionization coefficients) compared to Si APDs. The k of the 1000-nm AlGaAsSb APD is similar to that of the thick AlAsSb APDs (k similar to 0.005) and 5-8 times lower than that of 170nm-thick AlGaAsSb APDs (k similar to 0.5-0.8). Increasing the thickness of the multiplication layer over 1000nm can also reduce k further since the difference between electron and hole impact ionization coefficients becomes significant in this material system as the thickness of the multiplication layer increases. Therefore, this thick AlGaAsSb-based APD on an InP substrate shows the potential to be a high-performance multiplier that can be used with available short-wavelength infrared (SWIR) absorption layers for a SWIR APD.

Automated summary

The study demonstrated Al0.85Ga0.15As0.56Sb0.44 avalanche photodiodes (APDs) with a thick 1000nm multiplication layer, showing low dark current densities and excess noise compared to previously reported APDs. The thick AlGaAsSb-based APDs have the potential to be high-performance multipliers, especially when used with available short-wavelength infrared (SWIR) absorption layers.