Simon Fraser University

Purpose

The Project goal is to enhance the single-photon detection efficiency of semiconductor single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) in the shortwave infrared region by integrating metasurface designs with the high quality InGaAs/InP APD heterostructures grown at NRC. The Project’s metasurface design, based on an array of semiconductor nanostructures, allows for enhancing the absorption efficiency and controlling the spatial absorption profile within a thinner absorption region than conventional SPADs. These features of metasurface SPADs will enable enhanced single-photon detection efficiency of ~80%, while also improving the timing resolution by an order of magnitude to tens of picoseconds. Surface passivation techniques will be developed for the metasurface SPAD device architecture to achieve the proposed device metrics. The portable, metasurface-based SPADs with enhanced efficiency and timing resolution impacts a broad range of applications including quantum lidar and imaging, quantum sensing, quantum networks, and defense.