Dynamic range and sensitivity improvement in near-infrared detectors using silicon germanium bipolar complementary metal-oxide semiconductor technology

Classically gated infrared (IR) detectors have been implemented using charge-coupled devices (CCD). Bipolar complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (BiCMOS) technology emerged as a viable alternative platform for development. BiCMOS technology has a number of advantages over CCD and conventional CMOS technology, of which increased switching speed is one. The pixel topology used in this work is a reversed-biased diode connected heterojunction bipolar transistor. The disadvantage of CMOS detectors is the increased readout noise due to the increased on-chip switching compared to CCD, which degrades dynamic range (DR) and sensitivity. This yields increased switching speeds compared to conventional bipolar junction transistors. Sensitivity improved from 50 mA/W (peak) at 430 nm in CCD detectors to 180 mA/W (peak) (or 180,000 V/W) at 665 nm in BiCMOS detectors. Other CMOS IR detectors previously published in the literature showed sensitivity values from 2750 to 5000 V/W or 100 mA/W. The DR also improved from 47 and 53 dB to 70 dB. The sensitivity of conventional CCD detectors previously published is around 53 mA/W. The second advantage is that detection in the near-IR band with conventional silicon integrated technology is possible. This work has shown increased detection capabilities up to 1.1 μm compared to Si detectors.