High performance waveguide uni-travelling carrier photodiode grown by solid source molecular beam epitaxy

TL;DR

This paper reports the development of high-performance waveguide uni-travelling carrier photodiodes grown by solid source molecular beam epitaxy, achieving high bandwidth and RF power suitable for terahertz applications.

Contribution

It introduces the first phosphide-based UTC photodiodes grown by SSMBE, demonstrating superior control and performance over traditional growth methods.

Findings

3 dB bandwidth > 65 GHz

RF output power of 1.1 dBm at 100 GHz

Accurate power prediction via full-wave modelling

Abstract

The first waveguide coupled phosphide-based UTC photodiodes grown by Solid Source Molecular Beam Epitaxy (SSMBE) are reported in this paper. Metal Organic Vapour Phase Epitaxy (MOVPE) and Gas Source MBE (GSMBE) have long been the predominant growth techniques for the production of high quality InGaAsP materials. The use of SSMBE overcomes the major issue associated with the unintentional diffusion of zinc in MOVPE and gives the benefit of the superior control provided by MBE growth techniques without the costs and the risks of handling toxic gases of GSMBE. The UTC epitaxial structure contains a 300 nm n-InP collection layer and a 300 nm n++-InGaAsP waveguide layer. UTC-PDs integrated with Coplanar Waveguides (CPW) exhibit 3 dB bandwidth greater than 65 GHz and output RF power of 1.1 dBm at 100 GHz. We also demonstrate accurate prediction of the absolute level of power radiated by our antenna integrated UTCs, between 200 GHz and 260 GHz, using 3d full-wave modelling and taking the UTC-to-antenna impedance match into account. Further, we present the first optical 3d full-wave modelling of waveguide UTCs, which provides a detailed insight into the coupling between a lensed optical fibre and the UTC chip.