Photon-assisted tunneling for sub-bandgap light detection in silicon PN-doped waveguides

Abstract

We demonstrate silicon ridge waveguide photo-detectors capable of sub-bandgap light absorption and avalanche multiplication. The proposed waveguide photo-detectors contain highly doped PN junction, where a strong electric field can generate the photon-assisted tunneling current for sub-bandgap light incidence and amplify the generated photocurrent by the avalanche multiplication effect. The voltage-dependent sub-bandgap absorption coefficient and multiplication gain are experimentally evaluated for various doping configurations to find optimal photo-response with low dark currents. As a result, our representative silicon waveguide photo-detector gives sub-bandgap responsivities of similar to 10 and similar to 2 A/W under the applied reverse bias voltage of -8.3 V for near-infrared wavelengths of 1.31 and 1.52 mu m, respectively. The voltage-dependent frequency photo-response is also demonstrated with theoretical verification. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America