Germanium avalanche receiver for low power interconnects

Léopold Virot (), Paul Crozat, Jean-Marc Fédéli, Jean-Michel Hartmann, Delphine Marris-Morini, Eric Cassan, Frédéric Boeuf and Laurent Vivien
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Léopold Virot: Institut d’Electronique Fondamentale (IEF), Université Paris-Sud, CNRS
Paul Crozat: Institut d’Electronique Fondamentale (IEF), Université Paris-Sud, CNRS
Jean-Marc Fédéli: CEA, LETI, Minatec Campus
Jean-Michel Hartmann: CEA, LETI, Minatec Campus
Delphine Marris-Morini: Institut d’Electronique Fondamentale (IEF), Université Paris-Sud, CNRS
Eric Cassan: Institut d’Electronique Fondamentale (IEF), Université Paris-Sud, CNRS
Frédéric Boeuf: STMicroelectronics, Silicon Technology Development
Laurent Vivien: Institut d’Electronique Fondamentale (IEF), Université Paris-Sud, CNRS

Nature Communications, 2014, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-6

Abstract: Abstract Recent advances in silicon photonics have aided the development of on-chip communications. Power consumption, however, remains an issue in almost all integrated devices. Here, we report a 10 Gbit per second waveguide avalanche germanium photodiode under low reverse bias. The avalanche photodiode scheme requires only simple technological steps that are fully compatible with complementary metal oxide semiconductor processes and do not need nanometre accuracy and/or complex epitaxial growth schemes. An intrinsic gain higher than 20 was demonstrated under a bias voltage as low as −7 V. The Q-factor relating to the signal-to-noise ratio at 10 Gbit per second was maintained over 20 dB without the use of a trans-impedance amplifier for an input optical power lower than −26 dBm thanks to an aggressive shrinkage of the germanium multiplication region. A maximum gain over 140 was also obtained for optical powers below −35 dBm. These results pave the way for low-power-consumption on-chip communication applications.

Date: 2014
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DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5957

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