Measurement of the Static Optoelectronic Characteristics of InGaAs/InP Avalanche Photodiode

A measurement system is set up which could measure static optoelectronic characteristics of avalanche photodiodes (APDs). By using this system, the mesa-structure InP/InGaAs APDs is measured. The results show that the APDs have a relatively low dark current (~150 nA at 90% of breakdown) and a uniform photoresponse profile of about 500 μm diameter. A method of getting APDs's multiplication gain is also proposed. Through getting the photocurrent at the point where multiplication is beginning, the multiplication gain can be obtained by the simple current-voltage equipment. For InP/InGaAs APDs, the typical maximum multiplication gain measured by this method is about 10~100.