Practical fast gate rate InGaAs/InP single-photon avalanche photodiodes

Abstract

We present a practical and easy-to-implement method for high-speed near infrared single-photon detection based on InGaAs/InP single-photon avalanche photodiodes (SPADs), combining aspects of both sine gating and self-differencing techniques. At a gating frequency of 921 MHz and temperature of -30 °C we achieve a detection efficiency of 9.3%, a dark count probability of 2.8× 10-6 ns-1, while the afterpulse probability is 1.6× 10-4 ns-1, with a 10 ns "count-off time" setting. In principle, the maximum count rate of the SPAD can approach 100 MHz, which can significantly improve the performance for diverse applications. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.