Silicon nitride waveguide coupled 67+ GHz Ge photodiode for non-SOI PIC and ePIC platforms

Abstract

A Ge photodiode, directly coupled to a silicon nitride waveguide, showing more than 67 GHz bandwidth is demonstrated for the first time, which paves the way for utterly new SiN waveguide platform based applications. By light feeding through SiN waveguides, the new photodiode can also be a key enabler for a bulk-Si based, monolithically integrated electronic-photonic integrated circuit platform. We show that the new devices, fabricated on bulk-Si, provide the same bandwidths as Si waveguide coupled SOI based reference Ge photodiodes. However, their O-band responsivity is 0.3 A/W, which is about three times lower compared to the SOI waveguide coupled devices. We attribute this effect to substrate losses and few specific layout features but see some potential for improvement by design and technological optimizations. We demonstrate that the diodes can be fabricated with high yield and low metrics tolerances.