SOI metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor photon detector based on single-hole counting
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Updated: May 30, 2026

Silicon Metal-oxide-semiconductor Quantum Dots for Single-electron Pumping
Published on: June 3, 2015
Wei Du1, Hiroshi Inokawa, Hiroaki Satoh
1Research Institute of Electronics, Shizuoka University, Hamamatsu 432-8011, Japan. duwei@rie.shizuoka.ac.jp
Abstract:
In this Letter, a scaled-down silicon-on-insulator (SOI) metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) is characterized as a photon detector, where photogenerated individual holes are trapped below the negatively biased gate and modulate stepwise the electron current flowing in the bottom channel induced by the positive substrate bias. The output waveforms exhibit clear separation of current levels corresponding to different numbers of trapped holes. Considering this capability of single-hole counting, a small dark count of less than 0.02 s(-1) at room temperature, and low operation voltage of 1 V, SOI MOSFET could be a unique photon-number-resolving detector if the small quantum efficiency were improved.
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