title: Bandwidth enhancement of waveguide-coupled photodetectors with inductive gain peaking.
abstract: Silicon has recently attracted a great deal of interest as an economical platform for integrated photonics systems. Integrated photodetectors are a key component of such systems, and CMOS-compatible processes involving epitaxially grown germanium for photodetection have been demonstrated. Detector parasitic capacitance is a key limitation, which will likely worsen if techniques such as bump bonding are employed. Here we propose leveraging the complexity available in silicon photonics processes to compensate for this using a technique known as gain peaking. We predict that by simply including an inductor and capacitor in the photodetector circuit with the properly chosen values, detector bandwidths can be as much as doubled, with no undesired effects.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Washington, Campus Box 352500, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA. michael.gould@mail.mcgill.ca
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gould
authors.forename: Tom
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Baehr-Jones
authors.forename: Ran
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hochberg
mesh_terms: D000669:Amplifiers, Electronic; D003198:Computer Simulation; D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D004581:Electronics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D008027:Light; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010783:Photometry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012031:Refractometry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012542:Scattering, Radiation