High photodetection gain in a resonant tunneling diode waveguide modulator/detector

Resonant tunneling diode (RTD) optoelectronic devices have attracted considerable attention because their negative differential resistance (NDR) characteristics, which gives wide bandwidth electronic gain, can be applied to high-speed electroabsorption modulation and short optical pulse generation. The device we report on here is an AlAs-InGaAs-AlAs double barrier RTD integrated with a InGaAlAs optical waveguide, which acts as a modulator and also as a photoconductive detector with its own on-chip electronic amplifier.