Abstract
This paper reports a guardring-free planar AlInAs avalanche photodiode
(APD) for optical fiber communications. AlInAs APDs can achieve a larger gain-bandwidth
product (GBP) with lower excess noise than commercial InP APDs, and the guardring-free
planar structure enables these superior AlInAs APDs to have both a low dark
current and high reliability for practical use. We present the structure,
fabrication, designs, APD characteristics, and receiver sensitivity, systematically.
The guardring-free planar structure and its peculiarities are described, and
we show APD designs for 2.5-Gb/s and 10-Gb/s applications and their characteristics.
A 0.2-$\mu{\hbox {m}}$-thick AlInAs multiplication layer achieves a GBP of 120 GHz and
an excess noise factor of 2.9 at a multiplication factor of 10. Their dark
currents are less than 20 nA and their lifetime is evaluated to be 25 million
hours at 85$^{\circ}{\hbox
{C}}$. Lastly, we demonstrate that the guardring-free planar
AlInAs APDs with a transimpedance amplifier achieve the remarkable sensitivity
of $-$37.0
dBm at a bit error rate of $10^{-10}$ for 2.5-Gb/s signals and of $-$29.9 dBm at a bit error rate of $10^{-12}$ for 10-Gb/s
signals. This performance indicates that the guardring-free planar AlInAs
APDs have made great advances against commercial InP APDs and other AlInAs
APDs.
© 2009 IEEE
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