The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Nov. 27, 2012
Filed:
Aug. 24, 2010
Alvin Gabriel Stern, Newton, MA (US);
Alvin Gabriel Stern, Newton, MA (US);
Other;
Abstract
An advanced, back-illuminated, silicon avalanche photodiode (APD) design is presented using silicon-on-sapphire with a novel crystalline aluminum nitride (AlN) antireflective layer between the silicon and R-plane sapphire. The substrate supports optical and electrical integration of a high quantum efficiency silicon APD with a gallium nitride (GaN)-VCSEL diode in each pixel to form a novel, compact, emitter-detector pixel for passive and active 2-D and 3-D high resolution, imaging focal plane arrays. Silicon mesa pixels are anisotropically etched with a central inverted mesa frustum cavity. The APD detector is fabricated in the silicon mesa and the GaN-VCSEL diode is grown epitaxially in the center of the mesa. A sapphire microlens below each pixel collimates the VCSEL beam and focuses optical returns into the APD detector. APDs share a common front-side anode, and VCSELs share a common cathode. The APD cathode is electrically connected to the VCSEL diode anode in each emitter-detector pixel.