Breakdown characteristics of In/sub 0.52/Al/sub 0.48/As-InP heterojunction APDs

This paper describes the breakdown characteristics of In/sub 0.52/Al/sub 0.48/As-InP heterojunction APDs. This work also calculates the breakdown characteristics triggered by dark counts resulting from thermal generation or trapped carriers in the multiplication region. Finally, an attempt is done to further improve the breakdown probabilities by considering multistage heterojunction APDs.