We report the design of a cost effective, highly sensitive cw laser power meter with a large dynamic range based on a photodiode. The power meter consists of a photodiode, a current to voltage converter circuit, an offset balancing circuit, a microcontroller, an analog to digital converter, reed relays, and an alphanumeric liquid crystal display. The power meter can record absolute laser power ...

This paper reports on the investigation of charge-transfer noise and lag in CMOS image sensors. Noise and lag are analyzed for buried-photodiode CMOS active-pixel-sensor (APS) devices using a simple Monte-Carlo technique. Since the main mechanism of charge-transfer noise involves carrier emission over a barrier, the results are applicable to the soft reset of photodiode-type CMOS APS devices, a...

A new BiCMOS variable gain transimpedance amplifier with a large area integrated photodiode for automotive applications is presented. Through careful control of the input pole position and the frequency response of the core amplifier, the bandwidth of the transimpedance amplifier varies from 112 to 300 MHz when its gain changes from 14.2 kV to 400 V. The proposed circuit configuration maintains...

There has been an increasing interest in photonic generation of RF signals in the millimeter-wave (30GHz ∼ 300GHz) and/or terahertz-wave (0.1 THz ∼ 10THz) regions, and photodiodes play a key role in it. This paper reviews recent progress in the high-power RF photodiodes such as UniTraveling-Carrier-Photodiodes (UTC-PDs), which operate at these frequencies. Several approaches to increasing both ...

The photodiodes are the most important devices in an image sensor. Their answer depends on several factors, such as wavelength, the refraction index of materials, the width of the depletion region, the substrate doping and device dimensions. In this article, the responses of the BULK PIN photodiode and SOI PIN photodiode are compared. Through the comparison among the photogenerated current of t...

We present a review of our latest work on UniTravelling Carrier Photodiodes for high efficiency THz emission. The detectors’ waveguide structure allows for both higher responsivity and saturation power thus achieving the highest published THz figure of merit (PTHz/Popt ) up to 1.5 THz for such devices. We also discuss new material development using solid source MBE and the possibility of monoli...

We measured the thickness of an insensitive surface layer of a PIN photodiode, Hamamatsu S3590-06, used in the Tokyo Axion Helioscope. We made alpha-particles impinge on the PIN photodiode in various incidence angles and measured the pulse height to estimate the thickness of the insensitive surface layer. This measurement showed its thickness was 0.31±0.02 μm on the assumption that the insensit...

We propose two designs of nanoscale sub-fF germanium photodiodes which are efficiently integrated with silicon waveguides. The metal-optic cavities are simulated with the finite difference time domain method and optimized using critical coupling concepts. One design is for a metal semiconductor metal photodiode with <200 aF capacitance, 39% external quantum efficiency, and 0.588 (λ/n)³ cavity v...

The wide dynamic range and the contrast indexed imaging of logarithmic sensors have a great interest for a large variety of applications from digital photography to automatic machine vision. Still today, the high fixed pattern noise, low sensitivity and image lag remain open in such designs. In this paper, we present a new logarithmic pixel design by using photodiode in solar cell mode. This pi...

Manipulation of Electromagnetic Fields with Plasmonic Nanostructures: Nonlinear Frequency Mixing, Optical Manipulation, Enhancement and Suppression of Photocurrent in a Silicon Photodiode, and Surface-Enhanced Spectroscopy