Monolithic Integration of LEDs and SPADs in Standard CMOS Technology for Optical Joystick Application

Monolithic Integration of LEDs and SPADs in Standard CMOS Technology for Optical Joystick Application

Lodha, N.

Charbon, E. (mentor)

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Mircoelectronics

2012-10-23

The interest in combining optical functionality with integrated circuits has grown in recent years due to reduced manufacturing costs and increased yields. However, the poor efficiency of silicon based light sources has been a major obstacle in achieving this goal. Single-photon avalanche diode technology has proven to be highly efficient in several low light applications. Owing to their extremely high sensitivity, integrated SPAD arrays have been successfully explored in this thesis for a novel design of monolithically integrated CMOS emitter and detector in a standard CMOS technology. This work targets a specific consumer application of "Optical Joystick''. The designed emitter is a 16x16 array of avalanche mode silicon light emitting diodes. Four 16x20 arrays of silicon photomultipliers in each direction are designed to give light intensity information. Each pixel incorporates hot pixel elimination and temporal compression with a total area of 19x19 um2. The realized SPAD has an extremely low median dark count rate (DCR) of 0.75 Hz per um of active area, and 20% photon detection probability (PDP) for wavelengths ranging from 450 nm to 550 nm at 2 V excess bias. The system has also been characterized for afterpulsing probability, crosstalk and timing jitter. Measurements involving click and angle detection with a mirror mounted on the top of the chip are included as a proof of concept of the joystick design. The designed chip has an area of 1.7x1.5 mm2.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:44bafde8-51be-4da3-bec1-c753c2e3df9d

2013-11-01

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2012 Lodha, N.