High-performance silicon-graphene hybrid plasmonic waveguide photodetectors beyond 1.55 {\mu}m

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel silicon-graphene hybrid plasmonic waveguide photodetector capable of operating beyond 1.55 μm with high bandwidth over 20 GHz at 2 μm and over 40 GHz at 1.55 μm, demonstrating significant improvements in responsivity and speed.

Contribution

The study introduces a new waveguide design with enhanced light absorption and reduced contact resistance, achieving ultra-high bandwidth photodetectors beyond 1.55 μm for the first time.

Findings

3dB-bandwidth >20 GHz at 2 μm (limited by setup)

Responsivity of 0.4 A/W at 1.55 μm

3dB-bandwidth over 40 GHz at 1.55 μm

Abstract

A fast silicon-graphene hybrid plasmonic waveguide photodetectors beyond 1.55 {\mu}m is proposed and realized by introducing an ultra-thin wide silicon-on-insulator ridge core region with a narrow metal cap. With this novel design, the light absorption in graphene is enhanced while the metal absorption loss is reduced simultaneously, which helps greatly improve the responsivity as well as shorten the absorption region for achieving fast responses. Furthermore, metal-graphene-metal sandwiched electrodes are introduced to reduce the metal-graphene contact resistance, which is also helpful for improving the response speed. When the photodetector operates at 2 {\mu}m, the measured 3dB-bandwidth is >20 GHz (which is limited by the experimental setup) while the 3dB-bandwith calculated from the equivalent circuit with the parameters extracted from the measured S11 is as high as ~100 GHz. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time to report the waveguide photodetector at 2 {\mu}m with a 3dB-bandwidth over 20 GHz. Besides, the present photodetectors also work very well at 1.55 {\mu}m. The measured responsivity is about 0.4 A/W under a bias voltage of -0.3 V for an optical power of 0.16 mW, while the measured 3dB-bandwidth is over 40 GHz (limited by the test setup) and the 3 dB-bandwidth estimated from the equivalent circuit is also as high as ~100 GHz, which is one of the best results reported for silicon-graphene photodetectors at 1.55 {\mu}m.