Li Chuanbo

High performance silicon waveguide germanium photodetector

High-performance Ge-on-SOI p?i?n waveguide photodetectors with different sizes were fabricated. The performances, in terms of dark-current, photo current responsivity and 3-dB bandwidth, were well studied. A responsivity of 0.842?A/W at 1550?nm and dark current of 70?nA was measured from this detector at -1?V. The detector with a size of 4??m?10??m demonstrated an optical band width of 19?GHz at -5?V for 1550?nm. Both the experimental results and the finite-difference time domain simulation show that, when the device size is above a certain threshold, the absorption is not sensitively dependent on such designing parameters as the width and length of the photodetector.

Effects of high temperature rapid thermal annealing on Ge films grown on Si(001) substrate

Tensile strain, crystal quality, and surface morphology of 500 nm thick Ge films were improved after rapid thermal annealing at 900 °C for a short period ( 20 s) rapid thermal annealing, tensile strain and crystal quality degenerated. This phenomenon results from intensive Si—Ge mixing at high temperature.

Enhanced light trapping in periodically truncated cone silicon nanowire structure

Light trapping plays an important role in improving the conversion efficiency of thin-film solar cells. The good wideband light trapping is achieved using our periodically truncated cone Si nanowire (NW) structures, and their inherent mechanism is analyzed and simulated by FDTD solution software. Ordered cylinder Si NW structure with initial size of 80 nm and length of 200 nm is grown by pattern transfer and selective epitaxial growth. Truncated cone Si NW array is then obtained by thermal oxidation treatment. Its mean reflection in the range of 300–900 nm is lowered to be 5% using 140 nm long truncated cone Si NW structure, compared with that of 20% using cylinder counterparts. It indicates that periodically truncated Si cone structures trap the light efficiently to enhance the light harvesting in a wide spectral range and have the potential application in highly efficient NW solar cells.

High bandwidth surface-illuminated InGaAs/InP uni-travelling-carrier photodetector

Uni-traveling-carrier photodiodes (UTC-PDs) with ultrafast response and high saturation output are reported. A gradient doping layer and a narrow InP cliff layer were introduced to enhance the saturation and bandwidth characteristics. We measured the dark current, photo response, bandwidth, and saturation current of the fabricated UTC devices. For a 15-μm-diameter device, the dark current was 3.5 nA at a reverse bias of 1 V, and the 3-dB bandwidth was 17.2 GHz at a reverse bias of 5 V, which are comparable to the theoretically values. The maximum responsivity at 1.55 μm was 0.32 A/W. The saturation output current was over 19.0 mA without bias.