AP Seminar - High Gain Solid State Photodetectors and Image Sensors with Non-Avalanche Approaches
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Date
23 Jan 2024
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Organiser
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Time
10:00 - 11:00
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Venue
FJ301, 3/F, Wing FJ, PolyU Map
Speaker
Prof. Kai Wang
Summary
Photodetectors that enable weak light detection can be found in numerous applications for biomedical imaging, chemiluminescence detection and scientific spectroscopy. Photomultiplier Tubes (PMTs), Avalanche Photodiodes (APDs), Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) and Single Photon Avalanche Photodiodes (SPADs) have been widely adopted to achieve high gain. However, PMTs are bulky and power-hungry. They also suffer from severe temperature drift and are very sensitive to ambient environment. APDs, SPADs and SiPMs are compact but have high shot noise. These device-level shortcomings are inherited fundamentally with high gain mechanisms enabled by either photomultiplication or avalanche effect. Hence, a non-avalanche approach to high gain is highly desirable.
In this talk, a couple of high gain solid state photodetectors with non-avalanche approach have been proposed and studied. These devices are either based on thin-film transistors or compatible with CMOS technologies, making them attractive for large scale manufacturability and mass production.
Keynote Speaker
Prof. Kai Wang
Professor
School of Electronics and Information Technology
Sun Yat-Sen University
Prof. Kai Wang is currently associated with the School of Electronics and Information Technology at Sun Yat-Sen University (SYSU) in Guangzhou, China. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of Waterloo (Canada) in 2008 and continued his pursuit of excellence as an NSERC postdoctoral fellow at Thunder Bay Health Science Centre (Canada). During this time, he conducted cutting-edge research on large area imaging. In 2011, he joined Apple Inc. in US as a senior hardware development engineer, further enhancing his expertise.
In 2014, he shared his knowledge as a visiting professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in US. His passion for fostering advancements in the field led him to become one of the founding faculty members in the Microelectronics program at SYSU-CMU Joint Institute of Engineering (JIE). He has been a full professor since 2017 and is also cross-appointed by the State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies (SKL-OEMT) at SYSU, where he leads groundbreaking research in radiation detector and image sensor technologies.
His remarkable contributions to the scientific community include publishing over 120 journal papers and conference proceedings. He has also coauthored more than 40 patents, many of which have been successfully transferred to industry and brought nearly 2-million-yuan loyalty revenue to the university, resulting in the establishment of two start-up companies.
