One Inch Photodetector, v1

Here's a transimpedance amplifier board that fits inside a 1" lens-mount. It has low noise LDOs (LT3042 and LT3094) and a SOT-23-6 op-amp footprint (for e.g. OPA657 or OPA847).

The first board has a S5973 photodiode, an OPA657, a 10 kOhm feedback resistor, and a 0.2pF feedback capacitor. The circuit self-oscillates without any feedback capacitor.

The backside of the board has an MMCX-connector for the output signal, and 3 wires for power supplies (max +/-20V).

The noise-floor shows an ~18 dB bump as the 59 MHz -3dB bandwidth is approached - not that great. At low frequencies the noise-floor agrees with the thermal noise of a 10k resistor. Shot-noise from about 10uW optical power, producing a 4 uA photocurrent (photodiode responsivity ~0.4A/W), should be clearly (3 dB or so) above the 10k resistor thermal noise floor.

The noise-bump could be decreased with a larger feedback-capacitor, but this reduces bandwidth. The source capacitance is due to the S5973 photodiode (1.6 pF) and the differential (0.7 pF) and common-mode (4.5 pF) input-capacitance of the OPA657 op-amp. Clearly a lower input-capacitance opamp would be better. Stay tuned for tests with OPA858...

Note to self: can't use the Siglent SA's default detector mode of "Positive-peak" if we want quantitative dBm numbers from the analyzer. Use "sample" detector mode!

5 thoughts on “One Inch Photodetector, v1”

  1. Fantastic idea! I'm also quite a fan of building custom boards for my optics experiments. Have you tried out the OPA858 version yet?

    I'm inspired by the SM1 mount - I think I will "copy" you and see if I can build a variant for a quadrant PD 🙂

    Thanks!

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