A voltage-controlled tunable two-color infrared photodetector using GaAs/AlAs/GaAlAs and GaAs/GaAlAs stacked multiquantum wells

A voltage-controlled tunable two-color infrared detector with photovoltaic (PV) and photoconductive (PC) dual-mode operation at 3-5 mu m and 8-14 mu m using GaAs/AlAs/AlGaAs double barrier quantum wells (DBQWs) and bound-to-continuum GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells is demonstrated. The photoresponse peak of the photovoltaic GaAs/AlAs/GaAlAs DBQWs is at 5.3 mu m, and that of the photoconductive GaAs/GaAlAs quantum wells is at 9.0 mu m. When the two-color detector is under a zero bias, the spectral response at 5.3 mu m is close to saturate and the peak detectivity at 80 K can reach 1.0X10(11) cmHz(1/2)/W, while the spectral photoresponsivity at 9.0 mu m is absolutely zero completely. When the external voltage of the two-color detector is changed to 2.0 V, the spectral photoresponsivity at 5.3 mu m becomes zero while the spectral photoresponsivity at 9.0 mu m increases comparable to that at 5.3 mu m under zero bias, and the peak detectivity (9.0 mu m) at 80 K can reach 1.5X10(10) cmHz(1/2)/W. Strictly speaking, this is a real bias-controlled tunable two-color infrared photodetector. We have proposed a model based on the PV and PC dual-mode operation of stacked two-color QWIPs and the effects of tunneling resonance with narrow energy width of photoexcited electrons in DBQWs, which can explain qualitatively the voltage-controlled tunable behavior of the photoresponse of the two-color infrared photodetector. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.

A fast-settling frequency-presetting PLL frequency synthesizer with process variation compensation and spur reduction

This paper proposes a fast-settling frequency-presetting PLL frequency synthesizer. A mixed-signal VCO and a digital processor are developed to accurately preset the frequency of VCO and greatly reduce the settling time. An auxiliary tuning loop is introduced in order to reduce reference spur caused by leakage current. The digital processor can automatically compensate presetting frequency variation with process and temperature, and control the operation of the auxiliary tuning loop. A 1.2 GHz integer-N synthesizer with 1 MHz reference input Was implemented in a 0.18μm process. The measured results demonstrate that the typical settling time of the synthesizer is less than 3μs,and the phase noise is -108 dBc/Hz@1MHz.The reference spur is -52 dBc.