Temperature dependence of leakage current in InAs avalanche photodiodes

• Main Authors: Ker, P.J., Marshall, A.R.J., Krysa, A.B., David, J.P.R., Tan, C.H.
• Format: Article
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2017

Measurement and analysis of the temperature dependence of bulk and surface leakage currents in InAs avalanche photodiodes have been performed between 77 K and 290 K. At unity gain, SU-8 passivated InAs photodiodes have low dark current densities of 100 mA/cm2 at 290 K and 150 nA/cm2 at 77 K. An avalanche multiplication factor of 25 was measured at 13 V and 19.5 V at 290 K and 77 K, respectively. The photodiodes exhibit dynamic resistance-area products, calculated at 0.1 V of 34 Ω-cm2 at 290 K and 910 MΩ-cm2 at 77 K. Our analysis showed that between the temperatures of 200 K and 290 K, the bulk leakage current is proportional to n2<inf>i</inf> whereas the surface leakage current is proportional to n<inf>i</inf> from 77 K to 290 K, where n<inf>i</inf> is the intrinsic carrier concentration. The activation energies deduced were 0.36 eV and 0.18 eV suggesting diffusion dominated bulk current and generation and recombination dominated surface current. © 2011 IEEE.