Integrated Color Photodetectors in 40-nm Standard CMOS Technology

For the further integration of receivers in multi-color visible light communication systems, a novel color photodetector (PD) was designed and fabricated by using a 40 nm standard complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process without any process modifications. The PD consists of CMOS photodiode and two-dimensional (2D) polysilicon subwavelength grating above the photodiode. The 2D polysilicon grating is controlled in structural parameters to realize color filtering, based on guided-mode resonance, for the first time in a standard CMOS process. Here three kinds of color PDs were designed to respond to the three primary colors. The measured results demonstrate that the color PDs exhibit wavelength selectivity in the visible range (400-700 nm) and the maximum peaks in the spectral response curves of them are at 660 nm (red), 585 nm (green) and 465 nm (blue), respectively. In addition, the added 2D polysilicon grating almost does not reduce the responsivity of the photodiodes.