Being ready-to-detect over a certain portion of time makes the time-gated single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) an attractive candidate for low-noise photon-counting applications. A careful SPAD noise and performance characterization, however, is critical to avoid time-consuming experimental optimization and redesign iterations for such applications. Here, we present an extensive empirical study of the breakdown voltage, as well as the dark-count and afterpulsing noise mechanisms for a fully integrated time-gated SPAD detector in 0.35-$\mathsf{\mu }$m CMOS based on experimental data acquired in a dark condition. An “effective” SPAD breakdown voltage is introduced to enable efficient characterization and modeling of the dark-count and afterpulsing probabilities with respect to the excess bias voltage and the gating duration time. The presented breakdown and noise models will allow for accurate modeling and optimization of SPAD-based detector designs, where the SPAD noise can impose severe trade-offs with speed and sensitivity as is shown via an example.

中文翻译：

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具有时间门控光子计数操作的 SPAD 探测器的噪声和击穿表征

在特定时间段内准备好检测使时间门控单光子雪崩二极管 (SPAD) 成为低噪声光子计数应用的有吸引力的候选者。然而，仔细的 SPAD 噪声和性能表征对于避免此类应用的耗时实验优化和重新设计迭代至关重要。在这里，我们提出了对击穿电压的广泛实证研究，以及 0.35- 中完全集成的时间门控 SPAD 检测器的暗计数和后脉冲噪声机制。$\mathsf{\mu }$m CMOS 基于在黑暗条件下获得的实验数据。引入了“有效”SPAD 击穿电压，以实现暗计数和后脉冲概率的有效表征和建模，这些概率与过量偏置电压和门控持续时间有关。所呈现的击穿和噪声模型将允许对基于 SPAD 的检测器设计进行准确建模和优化，其中 SPAD 噪声可能会对速度和灵敏度造成严重的权衡，如示例所示。