Fabrication Of PIN And Avalanche Photodiodes For Visible And Near IR Applications

The purpose of this technical applications note is to provide the reader with a general background on multiplication processes in Silicon, and to describe some of the characteristics of silicon which make it such a useful material for the fabrication of PIN and Avalanche Photodiodes for visible and near IR applications.

The paper will describe approaches to the design of APDs, and will provide other information that will be helpful to a potential user of APDs. Finally, a bibliography of a number of useful papers is provided, as a source of further information on subjects that may be treated only briefly in this paper.