1,721,067 research outputs found
Variable-Load Quenching Circuit for Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes
No full textWe present a compact 50 μm x 100 μm cell for single-photon detection, based on a new circuitry monolithically integrated together with a 20 μm-diameter CMOS Single-Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD). The detector quenching relies on a novel mechanism based on starving the avalanche current till quenching through a variable-load (VLQC, Variable-Load Quenching Circuit). Fabricated in a standard 0.35 μm CMOS technology, the topology allows a SPAD bias voltage higher than the chip supply voltage to be used. Moreover it preserves the advantages of active quenching circuits, in terms of hold-off capability (from 40 ns to 2 μs) and fast reset (<2 ns), while maintaining the low avalanche charge (<1.6 pC/avalanche) and extremely small dimensions of passive quenching circuits. The cell enables the development of large-dimension dense arrays of SPADs, for two-dimensional imaging at the photon counting level with photon-timing jitter better than 40 ps
SPAD detection head with 32 fully-parallel channels for time-tagging single-photons at 3μs
No full textFully-integrated CMOS single photon counter
No full textTraditionally, Single Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPADs) are
fabricated using dedicated processes that require additional technological steps when compared to standard CMOS. Instead, this paper presents the design of SPADs that attain good performances, by using a standard highvoltage CMOS process. The detector is monolithically integrated together with an Active Quenching Circuit (iAQC), a counter, and a serial communication interface. This opens the way to the design and fabrication
of ultra compact multi-channel single-photon counters
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