Highly Reliable SiC UV SPAD With Over 10000 h of Continuous Operation
In this work, an ultraviolet (UV) 4H-SiC single-photon avalanche photodiode (SPAD) with a separated absorption-charge-multiplication structure is designed and fabricated, by which the electric field distribution within the device is optimized to enhance effective light absorption and reliability. The SiC SPAD exhibits a high single photon detection efficiency of 26.8%@270 nm and a low dark count rate of ~8.75 Hz/μm<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> at room temperature. For the first time, the reliability behavior of SiC SPADs under continuous Geiger-mode operation conditions is evaluated. The SPAD exhibits no performance degradation after over 10,000 hours of operation and a cumulative avalanche count exceeding 10<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">14</sup>, which demonstrates significant potential of SiC SPADs in practical UV photon counting applications.
Authors
- Dunjun Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1363-1413)
- Weizong Xu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5243-4984)
- Hai Lu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9835-6763)
- Dong Zhou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0410-1581)
- Feng Zhou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3159-0328)
- Rong Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0015-6331)
- Tianyi Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8791-9380)
- Fangfang Ren (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5598-9512)
- Youdou Zheng
- Xiaoqiang Tao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-5350-5742)
- Yan Zhou
Institutions
- Nanjing University of Science and Technology (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- IEEE Electron Device Letters
- Published
- 2025-10-03
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1109/led.2025.3617071
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Photonic and Optical Devices
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.73