Study on the noise characteristics of GaAs-based blocked-impurity-band (BIB) detectors

Terahertz (THz) photodetector has attracted great attention from worldwide scientists for its applications in security check, biomedical treatment, and astronomical observation. In the performance evaluation of the THz photodetector, the noise level is one of the critical parameters. The Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) blocked-impurity-band (BIB) detector, which is fabricated from intrinsic GaAs-based photoconductive detectors, reveals an attractive advantage of low dark current value and high signal to noise ratio (SNR). In this work, the epitaxial GaAs BIB detector was fabricated and its noise behavior under various bias was investigated at the temperature of 3.5 K. The measured noise consists of flicker noise (1/f noise), shot noise, thermal noise and measurement noise. The effect of bias and operation temperature (TOpe) on the noise characteristics of a GaAs-based BIB detector has been studied by numerical simulation for suppressing device noise. According to the simulation, the total noise gradually increases with TOpe, and dominated by the shot noise. Our work may provide useful theoretical support to solve the critical epitaxial growth bottleneck of GaAs BIB detector and improve its performance for the applications of astronomical observation, security check, etc.