On response time of semiconductor photodiodes

The effect of displacement currents due to dielectric relaxation of majority carriers in the charge-neutral region of a semiconductor photodiode is discussed. The dielectric relaxation is often neglected when treating the response time of photodiodes. We show that this component may dominate the slow response of not fully depleted photodiodes and has to be taken into account for correct analysis of silicon photodiode response to a brief laser pulse. A phenomenological expression for the photodiode response time that accounts for the displacement current effects is proposed and used to compare with the experimental results.