Plug-and-play photon counting detector based on a solid state silicon photomultiplier (SiPM), integrated into a compact module with user selectable bias and amplification. Rechargeable battery powered and conveniently packaged in an industry-standard 2" diameter, 1" long lens tube.
Integrated bias source with eight preset values from 24–29 V
Built-in low noise RF amplifier with 17 dB gain at 1 GHz
Ambient light safe
USB rechargeable: 10 hr continuous operation
Standard lens tube package with 2.035"-40 thread, 1" deep
Single photon detection
Pulse characterization
Time-of-flight measurements
The heart of the module is a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM), which has detection characteristics similar to a conventional photomultiplier tube (PMT). Advantages include low bias voltage (<30 V), robustness, and compact size. The SiPM consists of an array of 4774 avalanche photodiodes, each with its own quench resistor and a capacitively-coupled “fast output.” The fast outputs are combined and AC-coupled to a low noise, wideband inverting amplifier driving a 50 Ω load.
Bias voltage is generated on-board by an ultralow noise (<100 µVpp) switching regulator. The user-selectable bias is in steps of approximately 0.7 V from below the breakdown threshold to the maximum operating voltage for the detector. Dark current and gain vary with bias voltage; this tradeoff is application specific.
Please contact us to discuss custom solutions, pricing and lead-time. Example customizations include:
Example time series showing individual, quantized events. The user-selected bias voltage is 27.5 V; the data are sampled at 1 GS/s. The amplifier noise is 90 µs rms and the peak signal-to-noise for a single event is 20 (200 MHz bandwidth).
Photons Obey Poisson Statistics
Histogram of events from time history in the adjacent figure for low light level (3.9 x105 s-1). The red line is an exponential distribution for a pure Poisson process showing no excess noise or systematic errors. See our tutorial on photon statistics for theoretical background.
Time of Flight with a Silicon Photomultiplier and Nanosecond Pulsed Laser
In this video, we'll introduce two of our products with nanosecond time resolution: a silicon photomultiplier (Eikonal SIPM-01) and a pulsed laser diode (Eikonal NLD-01). Exploiting the nanosecond resolution, we'll set up a simple time of flight experiment to measure the speed of light on a table top.
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