PROTON IRRADIATION EFFECTS ON SINGLE-PHOTON AVALANCHE DIODES

Abstract

. In this paper, we investigated the discrete switching of the Dark Count Rate between two or more levels in Single-Photon Avalanche Diode devices. This phenomenon, known as Random Telegraph Signal, is related to the density and distribution of defects in the semiconductor lattice and oxides. In this paper, we focused on a test chip containing SPADs with different architectures designed and implemented in 150-nm CMOS technology. The occurrence probability of the Random Telegraph Signal for proton-irradiated devices has been measured as a function of temperature for different SPAD layouts.