A Low-Voltage Si-Ge Avalanche Photodiode for High-Speed and Energy Efficient Silicon Photonic Links

Silicon-germanium (Si-Ge) avalanche photodiodes (APDs) have large gain bandwidth product (GBP) and low excess noise due to the low impact ionization coefficient ratio of silicon. Optical receivers using APDs are able to achieve high-speed and energy efficient optical transceiver systems. We demonstrate a waveguide Si-Ge APD with low breakdown voltage of -10V, achieving 60 Gb/s PAM4 successfully. A compact APD circuit model was constructed to allow photonic devices and transceiver circuitry co-design. The APD receiver has achieved -16 dBm sensitivity at 50 Gb/s PAM4 with a bit error rate (BER) of 2.4 × 10
^-4
. The sensitivity of APD receivers changes with the multiplication gain. In our analysis, compared to a PIN PD receiver the APD receiver operating at optimum gain can obtain ~8 dB more sensitivity for NRZ signaling at <; 50 Gb/s and 3-4 dB more sensitivity for PAM4 signaling at 50-100 Gb/s. Also, the APD receiver operating at optimum gain can reduce power consumption by ~10% at PAM4 data rates of 50 Gb/s and ~15% at 100 Gb/s in a silicon carrier-depletion microring modulator based WDM photonic link.