Letter abstract
Nature Photonics 3, 59 - 63 (2008)
Published online: 7 December 2008 | doi:10.1038/nphoton.2008.247
Subject Category: Optoelectronic devices and components
Monolithic germanium/silicon avalanche photodiodes with 340 GHz gain–bandwidth product
Yimin Kang1, Han-Din Liu1,5, Mike Morse1, Mario J. Paniccia1, Moshe Zadka2, Stas Litski2, Gadi Sarid2, Alexandre Pauchard3, Ying-Hao Kuo4, Hui-Wen Chen4, Wissem Sfar Zaoui4, John E. Bowers4, Andreas Beling5, Dion C. McIntosh5, Xiaoguang Zheng5 & Joe C. Campbell5
Abstract
Significant progress has been made recently in demonstrating that silicon photonics is a promising technology for low-cost optical detectors, modulators and light sources1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. It has often been assumed, however, that their performance is inferior to InP-based devices. Although this is true in most cases, one of the exceptions is the area of avalanche photodetectors, where silicon's material properties allow for high gain with less excess noise than InP-based avalanche photodetectors and a theoretical sensitivity improvement of 3 dB or more. Here, we report a monolithically grown germanium/silicon avalanche photodetector with a gain–bandwidth product of 340 GHz, a keff of 0.09 and a sensitivity of -28 dB m at 10 Gb s-1. This is the highest reported gain–bandwidth product for any avalanche photodetector operating at 1,300 nm and a sensitivity that is equivalent to mature, commercially available III–V compound avalanche photodetectors. This work paves the way for the future development of low-cost, CMOS-based germanium/silicon avalanche photodetectors operating at data rates of 40 Gb s-1 or higher.
- Intel Corporation, 2200 Mission College Boulevard, Santa Clara, California 95054, USA
- Numonyx, 2 Tzoran Boulevard, Qiryat-Gat 82109, Israel
- Chemin de Crey-Derrey 152, 1618 Châtel-St-Denis, Switzerland
- University of California Santa Barbara, ECE Department, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA
- University of Virginia, ECE Department, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904, USA
Correspondence to: Yimin Kang1 e-mail: yimin.kang@intel.com
