Analysis of picosecond and subpicosecond MSM photodiodes with very low bias voltage
- Resource Type
- Periodical
- Authors
- Van Zeghbroeck, B.J.
- Source
- IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices IEEE Trans. Electron Devices Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on. 35(12):2433 Dec, 1988
- Subject
- Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Engineered Materials, Dielectrics and Plasmas
Photodiodes
Voltage
Pulse generation
Gallium arsenide
Computer simulation
Computational modeling
Space vector pulse width modulation
Sampling methods
Spontaneous emission
Charge carrier processes
- Language
- ISSN
- 0018-9383
1557-9646
Recently, 4.8-ps FWHM current pulses were generated with a 10- mu mm*15- mu GaAs metal-semiconductor-metal photodiode at a bias voltage of only 0.5 V. To explain this surprising result a full computer simulation was carried out to determine the pulse response as a function of the applied voltage. The simulations are in good agreement with the experiment and allow quantification of the contribution of various parameters to the pulse width. They also show that the photodiode can be used as subpicosecond sampling gate, even without the occurrence of a subpicosecond recombination mechanism, owing to the short diffusion relaxation time. A method is proposed for identifying the electron and hole currents in the photodiode by comparing the pulse response with the autocorrelation signal.ETX