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Avalanche photodiode with ultrahigh gain–bandwidth product of 1,033 GHz

Nature Photonics (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Avalanche photodiodes (APDs) have enabled highly sensitive photodetection in optical communication, sensing and quantum applications. Great efforts have been focused on improving their gain–bandwidth product (GBP). However, further advance has encountered enormous barriers due to incomplete consideration of the avalanche process. Here we implement a germanium/silicon APD with the GBP breaking through 1 THz. The performance is achieved by introducing two cooperative strategies: precisely shaping the electric field distribution and elaborately engineering the resonant effect in the avalanche process. Experimentally, the presented APD has a primary responsivity of 0.87 A W−1 at unity gain, a large bandwidth of 53 GHz in the gain range of 9–19.5 and an ultrahigh GBP of 1,033 GHz under −8.6 V and at 1,550 nm. For demonstration, data reception of 112 Gb s−1 on–off keying and 200 Gb s−1 four-level pulse amplitude modulation signals per wavelength are achieved with clear eye diagrams and high sensitivity, as well as 800 G reception via four channels. This work provides a potential successor for high-speed optoelectronic devices in next-generation optical interconnects.

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Fig. 1: The high-performance impedance resonance APD.
Fig. 2: Measured static/dynamic performance.
Fig. 3: The measured high-speed performance of the APD.
Fig. 4: The performance comparison of APDs.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the figures and from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China (2019YFB1803801 received by Y.Y.), National Natural Science Foundation of China (61922034 and 62135004 received by Y.Y.), Key Research and Development Program of Hubei Province (2021BAA005 received by Y.Y.), Innovation Project of Optics Valley Laboratory (OVL2021BG005 received by Y.Y. and X.Z.) and Program for HUST Academic Frontier Youth Team (2018QYTD08 received by Y.Y.).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics and School of Optical and Electronic Information, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

    Yang Shi, Guanyu Chen, Mingjie Zou, Hongjun Cai, Yu Yu & Xinliang Zhang

  2. School of Mechanical Engineering and Electronic Information, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China

    Xiang Li

  3. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Guanyu Chen

  4. Optics Valley Laboratory, Hubei, China

    Yu Yu & Xinliang Zhang

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  1. Yang Shi
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Contributions

Y.S. and Y.Y. jointly conceived the idea. Y.S. conducted simulation and designed the device. X.L. designed the equalization algorithm for high-speed signal reception. G.C. dealt with the chip fabrication. Y.S., M.Z. and H.C. performed the experiments. All authors contributed to the discussion of experimental results. Y.S. and Y.Y. wrote the manuscript with contributions from all co-authors. Y.Y. and X.Z. supervised and coordinated all the work.

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Correspondence to Yu Yu or Xinliang Zhang.

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Shi, Y., Li, X., Chen, G. et al. Avalanche photodiode with ultrahigh gain–bandwidth product of 1,033 GHz. Nat. Photon. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-024-01421-2

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