SBIR Phase I: Development of High Performance Ultraviolet Single Photon Detectors

United Silicon Carbide, Inc, Princeton NJ

Investigators

Abstract

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project proposes to develop and commercialize very high gain and low noise UV single photon detectors for numerous low signal intensity UV sensing over a very wide range of UV spectrum. The novel design for low voltage and high efficiency and advanced processing technologies combined with the unique material property used for the single photon detectors are expected to lead to orders of magnitude improvements to the performance of the UV single photon detectors. The single photon detectors are expected to be capable of high speed, high gain, high efficiency, low noise and high radiation tolerance. The single photon detectors overcome the major problems of their counterparts based on other wide bandgap semiconductors in terms of the excess noise, gain, and reliability. The project will develop a process for designing the single photon detectors, and demonstrating the feasibility by fabricating the proposed UV single photon detectors. The fabricated single photon detectors will be characterized and their potential and suitability for very low intensity light and single molecule detection will be investigated. The broader impacts of this project will result in UV single photon detectors with very high gain and very low excess noise thus enabling numerous applications including biosensing, biological warfare agent detection, single molecule detection, future photolithographic systems, cryptography, astronomy, missile detection, lidar and radar as well as basic quantum mechanics investigation.