Departmental Seminar – Professor Joe Campbell

High-sensitivity, low-dark-noise single photon detectors and photon counters are critical components for cell imaging, biodiagnostic instrumentation, semiconductor wafer inspection, particle counting, nuclear medicine, radiation detection and quantum cryptography, as well as low-light imaging applications such as security cameras and ranging lidar systems. To date, much of the research requiring detection at single photon levels utilized photomultiplier tubes PMTs). However, PMTs are bulky, expensive and, fragile; they also are sensitive to magnetic fields and have limited dynamic range. Semiconductor single photon avalanche detectors (SPADs) are an alternative to PMTs for some applications. This talk will review state-of-the-art Si and III-compound SPADs. The best performance, to date, has been achieved with Si SPADs. Discrete Si SPADs have achieved single photon detection efficiencies as high as 50% with ~ 100 dark counts/s at room temperature. Arrays of Si SPADs with integrated quenching circuitry have also achieved high efficiency in the visible and acceptable dark counts. This talk include our recent work with InP/InGaAs separate absorption, charge, and multiplication (SACM) avalanche photodiodes that operate at 1300 nm and 1550 nm and have achieved low dark counts and high detection efficiencies. Recently, we have also achieved single photon detection in the ultra-violet with SiC avalanche photodiodes. Characterization of these avalanche photodiodes and their performance as SPADs will also be presented.
Professor Joe C. Campbell is the Lucian Carr Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Virginia. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1971 and 1973, respectively. From 1974 to 1976 he was employed by Texas Instruments where he worked on integrated optics. In 1976 he joined the staff of AT&T Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey, where he was a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff. In 1989 he joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin as Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Cockrell Family Regents Chair in Engineering, and has been at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville since 2006. Professor Campbell’s research has focused on the optoelectronic components that are used to generate, modulate, and detect optical signals. At present he is actively involved in single-photon-counting avalanche photodiodes, Si-based optoelectronics, high-speed, low-noise avalanche photodiodes, ultraviolet photodetectors, and quantum-dot IR imaging. Professor Campbell teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on lasers and optoelectronic components. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and has received numerous awards including the IEEE/LEOS and OSA John Tyndall Award, IEEE Photonics Award, OSA Nicholas Holonyak Award, IEEE/LEOS William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award, and the IEEE Millennium Medal. He is a Fellow of Optical Society of America, IEEE, and the American Physical Society.