Open AccessHigh fill-factor miniaturized SPAD arrays with a guard-ring-sharing technique
Author(s) -
Keiko Morimoto,
Edoardo Charbon
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.389216
Subject(s) - jitter , optics , miniaturization , cmos , charge sharing , optoelectronics , physics , materials science , pixel , electronic engineering , engineering , nanotechnology
We present a novel guard-ring-sharing technique to push the limit of SPAD pixel miniaturization, and to demonstrate the operation of SPAD arrays with a 2.2 µm-pitch, the smallest ever reported. Device simulation and preliminary tests suggest that the optimized device design ensures the electrical isolation of SPADs with guard-ring sharing. 4×4 SPAD arrays with two parallel selective readout circuits are designed in 180 nm CMOS technology. SPAD characteristics for the pixel pitch of 2.2, 3, and 4 µm are systematically measured as a function of an active diameter, active-to-active distance, and excess bias. For a 4 µm-pitch, the fill factor is 42.4%, the maximum PDP 33.5%, the median DCR 2.5 cps, the timing jitter 88 ps, and the crosstalk probability is 3.57%, while the afterpulsing probability is 0.21%. Finally, we verified the feasibility of the proposed technique towards compact multi-megapixel 3D-stacked SPAD arrays.