Nanomaterials (Sep 2021)

Near-Infrared Photoresponse in Ge/Si Quantum Dots Enhanced by Photon-Trapping Hole Arrays

  • Andrew I. Yakimov,
  • Victor V. Kirienko,
  • Aleksei A. Bloshkin,
  • Dmitrii E. Utkin,
  • Anatoly V. Dvurechenskii

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/nano11092302
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 9
p. 2302

Abstract

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Group-IV photonic devices that contain Si and Ge are very attractive due to their compatibility with integrated silicon photonics platforms. Despite the recent progress in fabrication of Ge/Si quantum dot (QD) photodetectors, their low quantum efficiency still remains a major challenge and different approaches to improve the QD photoresponse are under investigation. In this paper, we report on the fabrication and optical characterization of Ge/Si QD pin photodiodes integrated with photon-trapping microstructures for near-infrared photodetection. The photon traps represent vertical holes having 2D periodicity with a feature size of about 1 μm on the diode surface, which significantly increase the normal incidence light absorption of Ge/Si QDs due to generation of lateral optical modes in the wide telecommunication wavelength range. For a hole array periodicity of 1700 nm and hole diameter of 1130 nm, the responsivity of the photon-trapping device is found to be enhanced by about 25 times at λ=1.2 μm and by 34 times at λ≈1.6 μm relative to a bare detector without holes. These results make the micro/nanohole Ge/Si QD photodiodes promising to cover the operation wavelength range from the telecom O-band (1260–1360 nm) up to the L-band (1565–1625 nm).

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