Waveguide coupled III-V photodiodes monolithically integrated on Si

The seamless integration of III-V nanostructures on silicon is a long-standing goal and an important step towards integrated optical links. In the present work, we demonstrate scaled and waveguide coupled III-V photodiodes monolithically integrated on Si, implemented as InP/In 0.5 Ga 0.5 As/InP p-i-n heterostructures. The waveguide coupled devices show a dark current down to 0.048 A/cm 2 at −1 V and a responsivity up to 0.2 A/W at −2 V. Using grating couplers centered around 1320 nm, we demonstrate high-speed detection with a cutoff frequency f 3dB exceeding 70 GHz and data reception at 50 GBd with OOK and 4PAM. When operated in forward bias as a light emitting diode, the devices emit light centered at 1550 nm. Furthermore, we also investigate the self-heating of the devices using scanning thermal microscopy and find a temperature increase of only ~15 K during the device operation as emitter, in accordance with thermal simulation results. To realize on-chip optical communication schemes based on silicon, the integration of waveguides onto III-V devices must be achieved. Here, the authors report waveguide-coupled III-V heterostructure photodiodes monolithically integrated on silicon waveguides via aligned nanowire.