Silicon p–n junctions biased above breakdown used as monitors of carrier lifetime

In this paper we show that single-photon avalanche detectors (SPADs) may have a strong potential as very sensitive on-wafer tools for lifetime monitoring, given their simple fabrication process and their straightforward use in the measurements. We have fabricated Si SPADs with n+–p structures and we show that dark counting has a simple exponential dependence on time, thus making it possible to extract a single lifetime parameter.