25 Gbps low-voltage hetero-structured silicongermanium waveguide pin photodetectors for monolithic on-chip nanophotonic architectures

Near-infrared germanium(Ge) photodetectors monolithically integrated on top of silicon-on-insulator substrates are universally regarded as key enablers towards chip-scale nanophotonics, with applications ranging from sensing and health monitoring to object recognition and optical communications. In this work, we report on the highdata-rate performance pin waveguide photodetectors made of a lateral hetero-structured silicon-Ge-silicon(Si-Ge-Si) junction operating under low reverse bias at 1.55 μm. The pin photodetector integration scheme considerably eases device manufacturing and is fully compatible with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology. In particular, the hetero-structured Si-Ge-Si photodetectors show efficiency-bandwidth products of^9 GHz at-1 V and ~30 GHz at-3 V, with a leakage dark current as low as ~150 nA, allowing superior signal detection of high-speed data traffic. A bit-error rate of 10-9 is achieved for conventional 10 Gbps, 20 Gbps, and25 Gbps data rates, yielding optical power sensitivities of-13.85 dBm,-12.70 dBm, and-11.25 dBm, respectively. This demonstration opens up new horizons towards cost-effective Ge pin waveguide photodetectors that combine fast device operation at low voltages with standard semiconductor fabrication processes, as desired for reliable on-chip architectures in next-generation nanophotonics integrated circuits.