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.