Solid-State High-Gain Optical Sensors with a Non-Avalanche Approach

High-gain that leads to high sensitivity is desirable for optical sensors. Devices such as avalanche photodiodes (APDs) and silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) based on avalanche impact ionization mechanism are widely used, however, they suffer from high shot noise due to avalanche effect. To resolve it, we developed a non-avalanche approach based on a photodiode-body-biased MOSFET (PD-MOS) fabricated in standard CMOS process with a gain of >10
⁴
and a dynamic range of >140dB.