Characterization of Al0.8Ga0.2As geiger photodiode

Solid-state photomultipliers (SSPM) are high gain photodetectors composed of Geiger photodiodes (GPD) operating above device breakdown voltage. In scintillation based radiation detection applications, SSPMs fabricated using silicon (SiPMs, MPPCs, etc) provide a compact, low cost alternative to photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), however, the high dark count rate due to its low band-gap (1.1eV) limits the signal-to-noise performance as the silicon SSPM is scaled to large areas. SSPMs fabricated in materials with a larger band-gap have the potential to surmount the performance limitations experienced by silicon. AlGaAs is a material that provides a bandgap from 1.55eV to 2.13 eV, depending on Al concentration. Using high Al concentration AlGaAs to engineer a wideband- gap (>2eV) SSPM is very desirable in terms of reducing dark noise, which promises better signal-to-noise performances when large detector areas is needed. This work describes the development of Geiger photodiodes (GPDs), the individual elements of a SSPM, fabricated in AlGaAs with 80% Al concentration. We present the design of the GPDs, the fabrication process, along with characterization data of fabricated GPD samples. To the best of our knowledge, we have demonstrated for the first time, a passively quenched Geiger photodiode in Al 0.8 Ga 0.2 As.