Design, fabrication and characterization of high performance resonant cavity enhanced photodetectors

Abstract

Photodetectors are essential components of optoelectronic integrated circuits and fiber optic communication systems. For higher system performances, photoreceivers with high bandwidth-efficiency products are needed. A new family of photodetectors introduced in the early 90's offers high performance detection along with wavelength selectivity: resonant cavity enhanced (RCE) photodetectors. In this thesis, we present our efforts for the design, fabrication and characterization of AlGaAs/GaAs-based Schottky and p-i-n type RCE photodiodes operating within the first optical communication window. Epitaxial wafers are designed using scattering matrix method based simulations and grown with molecular beam epitaxy. Schottky photodiode was primarily designed for high-speed operation, where as in p-i-n structure we aim to achieve near unity quantum efficiency. Measurement results show reasonable agreement our theoretical simulations. Fabricated Schottky and p-i-n RCE photodiode samples demonstrated high bandwidth-efficiency products, 36 and 46 GHz respectively. These results indicate the best performances for RCE Schottky and p-i-n photodiodes reported in scientific literature.