Reliability of High Speed Photodetector for Silicon Photonic Applications

Abstract

In this paper, the reliability of germanium photodiodes of the PIC25G technology for silicon photonic applications is experimentally studied. Using advanced characterization technics, it is shown that the dark current, the photonic current and the cut-off frequency of the photodiode can be degraded during voltage stress of 106 s, which could ultimately induce some device performance drift. The causes of these degradations are presently attributed to interface defects between germanium and SiO2, until more detailed investigation are pursued.