PROC.

20th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MICROELECTRONICS (MIEL'95), VOL 2, N15, SERBIA, 12-14 SEPTEMBER, 1995

Numerical Calculation of Photodetector Response

Time Using Ramo's Theorem
Z. Subjar, Z. Djuri6, M. Smiljanie, 2. Lazi6

Absrrw- The work presents a methodologyfor numerical
calculation of response time of p-i-n photodiodes using the
corpuscular approach, i.e. the Ramo's theorem. The calcula-
tions were performed for the Si p-i-n photodiode homostruc-
ture which is now already standard and for a high-speed
M-InGaAs-InP photodetector heterostructure. The results
show a good agreement with the results obtained using the
usual collective approach, however in our calculation the
numerical calculation is significantly simplified, and the phy-
sical presentation of the process is extremely simple.
I. INTRODUCTION
It is well known that the performance of modern photo-
detectors is determined by three basic parameters: sensiti-
vity, response time and noise equivalent power (NEP). In
practical situations it is almost always necessary to achieve
maximum product of sensitivity and reciprocal response
time.
Optical communication applications require very fast de-
tectors (>lGHz), therefore they are fabricated in materials
with high carrier mobility (GaAs, InGaAs, etc.). The res-
ponse time in the depletion layer of a photodetector is
much shorter than the response time in the quasineutral
regions. These photodetectors are therefore designed to
achieve maximum of optically generated carriers in the
depletion layer.
A number of works handles the problem of determina-
tion of response time [l-91. All the applied methods use
valley with electric field increase. These effects are signi-
ficant if the response time is about 5ps. Averaged, these
effects can also be taken into account by using empirical
dependencies of mobility on electric field [5,6,8,9].
Another approach to the calculation of response time in
the depletion layer is the corpuscular one, using the Ra-
mo's theorem [2-4]. M e r a number of contradictory state-
ments [3,4] it may be taken as proved that the Ramo's
theorem is applicable for determination of impulse respon-
se in depletion layer. In [2] a method was presented for
determination of impulse response of photodetectors and
applied to the case when it was assumed that the velocity
of carriers in the depletion layer was constant.
In this work the Ramo's theorem is generalized and
applied to the case when mobility depends on electric field.
The basic advantages of this approach are a very clear
physical presentation of the process and an extremely
simple numerical procedure.
11. THEORY
The structure of a p-i-n photodiode is shown in Fig. 1.
pi Si or pi I ~ P n Si orn InP
Y$.+jTL
(window)

n-Si or n-InGaAs
(Buffer)

two approaches, the collective and the corpuscular appro- 0 d

ach. The collective approach [1,6-91 uses the usual system

Fig. 1. Schematical presentation of a p-i-n structure.
of semiconductor kinetic equations and the Poisson's
equation. The solutions of this system for different optical According to the generalized Ramo's theorem [2], a mo-
excitations determine time dependence of some of its para-
ving charge q k generated in the coordinate %(f) in the
meters, usually the short circuit current. Generally, it is depletion layer causes in the moment t the appearance of
assumed here that carrier mobility depends on electric the charge Q k at the edge of the depletion layer, given by,
field.
An especially interesting consideration of this problem
for the case of two-valley semiconductor was published in
[7], where the collective approach was generalized to take
into account the nonstationary effects of electron transfer
where AVk is the voltage drop at the depletion layer due to
from the higher mobility valley into the lower mobility
generation of the charge Qk.The short circuit current
(A&=O) is obtained by simple differentiation of (1)
2. SuSnjar, 2. DjuriE and 2. L a i d are with IHTM - Institute of
Microelectronic Technologies and Single Crystals, the Univer-
sity of Belgrade, NjegoSeva 12, 11000 Belgrade, Yugoslavia,
E-mail eirntOOl@yuss21.bg.ac.yu

0-7803-2786-1/95/$4.00 0 1995 IEEE

71 7
 Total short circuit current is calculated using the super-
position principle:
(3)
Here v&) denotes the effective velocity caused by electric
field and diffusion. The diffusion term in velocity can
usually be omitted because it becomes neglectable as soon
as the potential across the region becomes higher than
kT/q [8]. Thus the drift velocity in (3) becomes
where pk(E) is mobility, and E the electric field.
To consider the influence of capacitance of the depletion
region on the response time we will suppose that the
resistor R is connected to the photodetector (R includes the
built-in detector resistance). The voltage change due to
carrier generation is then AV=R-i,thus using (1) we obtain
(5)
where io(t) is given by (3). In obtaining (3) we neglected
the dependence of the depletion layer width on time.
Let us consider now the response from the depletion
layer to the impulse light excitation F&(t). The charge
carrier distribution immediately &er the illumination
(go) is shown in Fig. 2a, while Fig. 2b shows the charge
carrier distribution for a given P O .
Fig. 2. Distribution of charge carriers after illumination FoS(t)e"
in depletion layer, (a) t=O and (b) 0 0 .
Assuming that the number of optically generated carriers
remains small enough not to perturb the existing electric
field E which can be obtained by solving the Poisson's
equation, using (3) we may write
71 8
where qb and qb denote the carrier package given by
A is the photodiode area, q is electron charge, a is the ab-
sorption coefficient, Axo is the width of the package, and
Fo the number of photons falling onto a unit area of
photodetector. To determine the position of qkn or qkp for a
package generated in the point XkO it is necessary to find
the package coordinate in the moment Q=to+jAt.The re-
current relation for determination of the electron package
position is
xw = X k n ( j - l ) + v n [ ~ ( X k n ~ j - ~ ~ ) ] ~ (7)
with the initial condition
and analogously for the position of hole packages. In this
way (3) becomes
111. NUMERICAL,
CALCULATION
To perform calculation using (8) it is necessary to know
the explicit dependence of electric field on position and the
dependence of the drift velocity on electric field.
In this work we consider two cases, the standard silicon
p-i-n structure for which we assumed that the electric field
is given by the expression [13
d2W
E=
.(x-W eff ) j"; =
d<W
(9)
. For the drift velocity of electrons and holes for silicon we
used the empirical relation [111:
where ~ = 1 3 3 0 c m ~ N sb=495cm2Ns,
, Ecn=8000 Vlm,
Ecp=19500 Vlm, p,,=2, Pp=l and FU-I-U. is the s u m of
the applied voltage and the contact potential difference.
 Another structure considered here belongs to the p-i-n
structures [8] used for new high bit rate optical communi-
cafion systems. It consists of an intrinsic absorbing layer of
InGaAs between two InP doped layers, p’ and n,
respectively. The determination of the expression for elec-
tric field in such a structure is much more complex than in
homostructures. Fig. 3 shows the distribution of charge
carriers and electric field in the mentioned structure.
where p,,=10.500cm2Ns, h=420cm2Ns, v,p6.106cm/s,
v , ~ = ~ . S * ~ O ~p=7.4.10-’0(V/~~)-22.s,
C~/S, ~2.5.
The numerical calculations were performed for a Si
p-n--n structure, where concentration in the weakly doped
n- region was N~10’4cm’3, and the region width
d=l50pm. The time dependence of normalized short circu-
it current was calculated first for the impulse excitation
F&(t); then the simple integration was applied to obtain
response for the Heaviside unit excitation. Fig. 4 shows the
calculation results for three different values of potential t + ~
at the wavelength of Nd:YAG laser radiation. The intrin-
sic absorption coefficient was a=13.25cmm1[13].

1.o

Fig. 3. Schematic presentation of charge carrier and electric field 0.8

distribution in Irs-InGaAs-EP p-n--nheterostructure.

E Od
.3
For the case of depletion of the absorption region with $ 0.4

the width d, the electric field is given by [SI: 3

0.2

0.00 1 2 3 4 5
--x <x<o t Ins1
P

Fig. 4. Normalized short circuit current for silicon photodiode,

d=150 pm, N~=l0”~ m ’N~~, = l o ”cm-3

The rise time was calculated (0.1-0.9) using the Heavi-

side response. It is shown in Fig. 5 for different voltages.
7

where 8

T 5
.5

.-
.-E 4

.c 3

0 20 40 80 80 100 120 140 180

Y IVl
Fig. 5. Rise time dependence on bias for silicon photodiode,
d=150 pm N~=lo’~ ~ m -N~=l0’*
~, ~ m -N.=1017
~, ~m-~.
EF13-Eo [lo], ~=12.4.~0[12].
The empirical relations for electron and hole velocities In the curves in Fig. 5 two characteristic parts can be
in InGaAs are [SI seen., The first part concerns voltages for which the
depletion region width is smaller than the weakly doped
region width d, and the other part denotes voltages higher
than depletion voltage. In our case the depletion voltage
was 40V.

71 9
 Similar calculations were performed for another (I*- IV. CONCLUSION
InGaAs-InP) photodiode structure, where the weakly
doped region was 3pm wide, N+-10'5cm-3, N~=lO'*cm-~ Contrary to the highly complex mathematical models
and ND=10'7cm'3. The absorption coefficient at h=1.3pm [6-91 based on the collective approach in determination of
was 1.16.1O6m-*[lo]. Fig. 6 shows separately response dynamic response, in this work we used the simple
time of electrons, t, (dashed line), holes, tp (dotted) and corpuscular approach to arrive at the same results. We
resultant response time, tc (solid). confirmed it by comparison of numerical calculations for
the case when the dependence of carrier velocity on
electric field was taken into account for two basic structu-
res: a Si p-i-n structure and a 10s-InGaAs-InP p-i-n hete-
rostructure.

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