High Speed SPAD Active Quenching and Reset Chipset in 55nm BCDLite Process for Quantum Applications

This paper presents a high-speed single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) active quenching and reset chipset for quantum applications. This chipset includes a low voltage current sensing chip and a high-voltage (HV) driver chip which can be scaled up to a multi-channel SPAD system. Both chips are implemented in a 55nm BCDLite process. The measurement results show that the current sensing chip can detect picoampere avalanche current with less than 1ns response time and generate tunable pulse width quench and reset signals using an on-chip digital process unit (DPU). On-chip programmable clock generator provides tuning range between 2ns - 1000ns with step size of 1ns. For HV driver chip, with a high-speed HV half bridge driver and associated level shifter, this circuit can drive 20pF load using 15V quenching signal with nanosecond delay.