Optically controlled low-power on-off mode resonant tunneling oscillator with a heterojunction phototransistor switch

Abstract

We report an optically controlled low-power on-off mode oscillator based on a resonant tunneling diode (RTD) that is monolithically integrated with a heterojunction phototransistor (HPT) optical switch. In order to achieve a low-power operation at a wavelength of 1.55 mu m an InP-based quantum-effect tunneling diode is used for microwave signal generation based on a unique negative differential conductance (NDC) characteristic of the RTD at a low applied voltage. In addition, the high-gain HPT is used for converting incident optical data to an electrical data signal. The fabricated on-off mode oscillator shows a low-power consumption of 5 mW and a high-data-rate of 1 Gb/s at an oscillation frequency of 4.7 GHz. A good energy efficiency of 5 pJ/bit has been obtained due to the low DC power consumption along with high-data-rate performance of the RTD-based optoelectronic integration scheme.