Enhancement of Photodetector Responsivity in Standard SOI CMOS Processes by introducing Resonant Grating Structures

Abstract

A new photodetector concept is described, which is fully compatible with the standard SOI CMOS process and does not require any post-processing steps. Our simulations are based on two-dimensional RCWA (Rigorous Coupled Wave Analysis) and local absorption theory (K.-H. Brenner, “Aspects for calculating local absorption with the rigorous coupled-wave method” Optics Express 2010, Vol. 18, Iss. 10, pp. 10369-10376, (2010)). The simulations show that optimized lateral grating structures are able to enhance the absorption efficiency of thin semi-conductor detectors by a factor of 32 compared to non-enhanced approaches.

Keywords

• local absorption
• rcwa
• photodetector design