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Ge photodetectors integrated in CMOS photonic circuits

Article in Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering · February 2008
DOI: 10.1117/12.767035

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 Invited Paper

Ge photodetectors integrated in CMOS photonic circuits.

G. Masinia, S. Sahnia, G. Capellinib, J. Witzensa, J. Whitea, D. Songa and C. Gunna
a
Luxtera, Inc, 2320 Camino Vida Roble, Carlsbad, CA, USA 92011;
b
Physics Department, University 'Roma Tre', Via Vasca Navale, 84, 00146 Roma, Italy

ABSTRACT

We describe our approach to the monolithic integration of Ge photodetectors in a photonics-enabled CMOS technology.
Ge waveguide photodetectors allow fast and efficient conversion of optical signals in the near infrared (1.55um) to the
electrical domain thus enabling the fabrication of compact, high speed (10Gbps) receivers.
Keywords: Ge detectors, Si optoelectronics, waveguide detectors, near infrared, optical communications

1. INTRODUCTION
Since the early pioneering works of Soref on the electro-optical properties of Si in the near infrared [1], impressive
progresses have been done in the field of Si photonics with demonstration of all fundamental building blocks to couple,
guide, modulate, filter and detect an optical signal. Today, Si-based discrete optical components, such as variable optical
attenuators, are commercially available and find use in several applications [2]. While these devices have specific
peculiarities that makes them successful over their dielectric, III-V or polymer-based counterparts in a competitive
market, they do not exploit, yet, the real advantage of the Si platform, i.e. the monolithic integration of several different
functions on the same chip. The latter is expected to bring to the optical transceivers world, the same advantage that
propelled the ubiquitous success of CMOS electronics: the collapse of the cost per function.
Crystalline Si is an excellent optical material, with minimal absorption in the near infrared at the common fiber optics
communication wavelengths. Moreover, its refractive index can be modulated by injection of free carriers (electrons and
holes) to create active optical devices such as modulators and switches. When it comes to photodetection, however, the
excellent transmission properties of Si makes it useless and force the use of other materials with high enough absorption
coefficient in the wavelength region of interest. Germanium has been identified since long time as a possible candidate
for its excellent transport properties and the high absorption efficiency in the infrared up to 1.55um. This paper reports
on the approach developed by Luxtera to integrate Ge photodectors in a CMOS process along with other optical
components to fabricate high speed optical transceivers.

2. LUXG TECHNOLOGY
LuxE is Luxtera's technology integrating optical functionality in Freescale's 130nm HIP7_SOI process. LuxE optical
library includes input/output elements, high and low speed phase and amplitude modulators, waveguides and branching
devices. All these elements share the same Si substrate with CMOS transistors thus allowing seamless integration of
optical and electronic functionalities on the same integrated circuit. Recently, we demonstrated a 40 Gbps (4 channel
10Gbps each) optical transceiver based on LuxE and using flip chip photodetectors for the receivers [3]. LuxG adds to
LuxE the ability to detect high speed optical signals directly on the Si chip by integrating Ge waveguide photodetectors
along with the other optical and electronic components. This chapter details the process used to integrate Ge detectors in
the CMOS process.
Thanks to its very high absorption coefficient at the wavelengths used in optical communications and compatibility with
Si processes, Ge is an ideal candidate for Si-based photodetection in the near infrared. Even if III-V compounds, such as
InGaAs, would be preferable due to their direct bandgap structure and optimal energy gap, their integration in a Si
technology is complicated by the different crystal structure, lattice parameter and, especially, by cross contamination
concerns.
SiGe alloys are commonly used in modern Si technologies to fabricate high speed heterojunction bipolar transistors
(HBTs) [4] and as 'stressors' in recessed source/drain regions of pmos transistors [5]. The Ge fraction in the alloys used
for these applications is usually in the 10-20% range and the films are compressively strained, i.e., they are grown

Silicon Photonics III, edited by Joel A. Kubby, Graham T. Reed

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6898, 689808, (2008) · 0277-786X/08/$18 · doi: 10.1117/12.767035

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6898 689808-1

2008 SPIE Digital Library -- Subscriber Archive Copy
keeping the lattice parameter of the (Si) substrate, thus accumulating elastic energy. When the Ge content in the alloy is
increased, the maximum thickness of a strained film, the so called critical thickness, reduces down to a few monolayers
for a pure Ge film [6]. If a SiGe film is grown above the critical thickness, the elastic energy is released, plastic
deformation occurs and defects are introduced in the crystalline structure of the material. These usually manifest as
dislocations. Depending on the growth technique, dislocation can be localized at the substrate/film interface (misfits) or
can cross the film through its thickness as threads. Dislocations are deleterious since they affect the electronic properties
of the film. Several methods have been proposed to limit the density of threads in the epitaxial SiGe film when its
thickness exceeds the critical thickness. Most of them are based on the use of buffer layers, while others employ the
surfactant properties of some species (such as Sb [7]) to confine defects at the substrate/film interface.
Graded SiGe layers have been demonstrated effective to trap dislocations thus enabling the growth of a relaxed, thick Ge
layer on a Si substrate. By combining the graded buffers to chemical mechanical polishing steps, films with record low
dislocation density (in the order of 106 cm-2) have been grown [8]. The drawback of this approach is the long and thick
(about 10um) growth required to relax the strain which makes the use of this approach in an integrated process
problematic. More recently, thin, not graded, SiGe buffers have been proposed to overcome this issue [9]. The most
suitable method for the integration of a Ge module in a modern CMOS process is the low-temperature buffering
technique first introduced in [10]. In this approach, a Ge film is grown by CVD at a substrate temperature in the 350-
390C directly on Si to a thickness of about 50nm. Thanks to the surfactant action of the hydrogen released by cracking
of germane, and to the low surface mobility of the precursors, the film grows in the layer by layer mode and island
formation is suppressed [11]. Moreover, dislocations are mostly confined at the interface. The buffer thickness is
sufficient to completely relax the mismatch strain by insertion of dislocations, therefore, any further growth (which can
be performed at higher temperature to increase deposition speed and crystal quality) proceed as in the homoepitaxial
case. High performance photodetectors have been reported in the literature using Ge films grown on Si by the low-
temperature buffer technique [12].
Integration of Ge photodetectors in a CMOS process is not limited to the choice of an appropriate epitaxy technique.
Positioning the Ge module within the CMOS process steps, for example, is a challenging task due to the additional
thermal contribution brought by the epitaxy step and to the maximum temperature the Ge film can withstand. Other
important factors to be considered are the contamination risks, the availability and characteristics of a contact module to
connect the detector to the rest of the circuits, and the choice of implant steps to form the photodetector junction.
As shown in Figure 1, LuxG integrates the Ge module at the end of the front-end processes (after transistor formation)
and just before the standard contact module. This approach combines the advantage of sharing the same contact module
with the transistors and the other active optical components, thus reducing complexity, and avoid exposing the Ge film
to the high temperatures typical of gate and dopant activation steps. Moreover, since transistors are fully formed at this
stage, it is much easier to protect them during the Ge epitaxy to avoid contamination.

Figure 1: LuxG process flow

3. LUXG WAVEGUIDE PHOTODETECTORS

Due to the headroom limitations dictated by the CMP steps used in the back-end of the CMOS process, the total
thickness of a Ge film grown on the Si substrate must be kept well below one micron. Ge-based surface-illuminated
detectors require an absorption region thicker than 2 micron to reach reasonable efficiency at the wavelength of 1.55um

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6898 689808-2

[13], therefore, their integration in the CMOS landscape is very problematic. Waveguide photodetectors, on the contrary,
by absorbing light in propagation parallel to the Si surface, convert the thickness to a length requirement which can be
easily accommodated in an integrated device (see Figure 2). A typical Ge on Si waveguide photodetector, thanks to the
very high refractive index of Ge, requires only a few hundred nanometer thick film and can efficiently absorb near
infrared light in 10-20 micrometer of propagation.
Ge on Si waveguide photodetectors can have different electrical configurations based on the electrode placement:
cathode and anode can, in fact, be both on the Ge film thus realizing a homojunction device where Si acts only as the
substrate and is not interested by current flow. Examples of such devices are reported in [14]. If one of the contact is on
Ge and the other is on Si, the device is an heterojunction. Usually, the Si contacting the Ge film is highly doped to
reduce the barrier for photocarrier injection, as in the devices reported in [15]. Finally, both electrodes can sit on the Si
film and the electrical contact to the Ge film is established through highly doped p- and n-type regions. This type of
device is appealing since it does not require any metal contact to the Ge film, however, both electrons and holes
photogenerated in the Ge film must cross the heterointerface to be collected at the contacts which can cause efficiency
loss, especially at low bias.
LuxG photodetectors have a homojunction structure. A typical LuxG pin waveguide photodetector is shown in Figure 3.

Photodetector

Waejhje
__ Absorption direction

//SurV////////fl4
Surface illuminated
Waveguide
Figure 2. Surface illuminated (left) and waveguide (right) photodetectors. In the waveguide case, the absorption
occurs along propagation parallel to the substrate thus allowing the use of a very thin Ge film.

The detector exhibits a responsivity of 0.85A/W at the wavelength of 1550nm and a dark current of 3uA at 1V reverse
bias and 50C. The responsivity is independent on the applied reverse bias down to short circuit, as shown in Figure 4
where the current-voltage characteristics of the device in the dark and under illumination are plotted, suggesting a good
junction and material quality. The latter is confirmed by the wide bandwidth (exceeding 20GHz) shown by the detector
even at moderate reverse bias (see Figure 5). By analyzing the frequency response of a set of devices with different
junction width, we concluded that the bandwidth is limited by the transit time down to junction width of 300nm.

Figure 3: 3D view of a LuxG homojunction waveguide photodetector

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6898 689808-3

 -2
10
-3 light
10
-4
10
Current [A] 10
-5
dark
-6
10
-7
10
-8
10
-9
10
-4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2
Voltage [V]
Figure 4: current-voltage characteristics of a PIN device in the dark and under illumination at 1550nm. Light is
coupled to the detector through a Si waveguide.
Normalized photoresponse

0.1
0.1 1 10 100
Frequency [GHz]
Figure 5: frequency response of a Ge PIN waveguide photodetector at 1V reverse bias. The optical bandwidth
exceeds 20GHz.

4. INTEGRATED HIGH SPEED RECEIVER

Ge waveguide photodetectors have been monolithically integrated with a CMOS transimpedance amplifier (TIA) to
realize high speed optical receivers working at 1550nm. Details on the design of the transimpedance amplifier can be
found in [16]. The integration of the detectors with the amplifier allowed to test the receivers using an optical input

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6898 689808-4

signal directly on the wafer, without any further processing. The picture in Figure 6 shows one of the receivers being
tested on a standard probestation complemented with a fiber-based system to couple infrared light in the circuit. The
circuit is biased at 1.5V through the DC probes visible on the left, while the high speed output signal is extracted using
the differential RF probe (top). The waveguide detector is in the bottom part of the picture, partially covered by the
optical pick-up. In the waferscale test, a high speed (10Gbps) optical PRBS at 1550nm is injected in the detector and the
resulting electrical eye diagram at the output of the transimpedance amplifier is recorded using a high speed
oscilloscope. A typical eye diagram recorded with this setup is shown in Figure 7. Sensitivity tests performed on this non
optimized receiver showed error free operation (<10-12 bit error rate) down to -14.2 dBm.

0 FSF L 11i1,ii

?i
I
f ii
F

•
'IF

Figure 6: Optical microscope picture of a transimpedance amplifier with LuxG waveguide photodetectors during
waferscale test. The DC probes on the left serve to power the amplifier and bias the detector, while the RF probe
on the top is used to extract the high speed electrical signal.
EJ toI Bt zB csala UtIIftS P

Rao

JifterRMS

*1
Jifterp-p

Trill
Power

Percentage

, 50 MW/div ig.g mv/div .57. lmV/div j 1)1.0 mv/div Time.15.0 ps/div Thg: Norceal Pattern
OJJW I joov I J2.8mv lOOe/ Delay:24JJ745ns-200mv J .SLock

Figure 7: 10Gbps eye diagram recorded at the output of the transimpedance amplifier when the Ge detector is
illuminated with a 10^7-1 PRBS signal at the wavelength of 1550nm.

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6898 689808-5

 5. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper we illustrated an approach to integrate Ge waveguide photodetectors in a CMOS process. The detectors
have an homojunction structure and exhibit 0.85A/W responsivity and >20GHz bandwidth at 1.55um and a dark current
of 3uA at 1V reverse bias. The detectors have been integrated with CMOS transimpedance amplifiers showing a
sensitivity of -14.2 dBm at 10Gbps.

Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the Microsystems Technology Office at DARPA under contract number HR0011-
05-9-0004

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