Recent advances in Ge/Si PIN and APD photodetectors

Photodetectors on a Si platform are important because of the opportunity to manufacture literally millions of photodetectors per wafer and because the use of a mature CMOS (Complementary Metal‐Oxide‐Semiconductor) process results in low cost and high uniformity. In this paper, we review recent results on Ge‐Si‐based PIN‐type photodetectors and avalanche photodetectors (APD). We show several exciting advantages of SiGe photodetectors namely, the higher thermal conductivity of Si and Ge, resulting in higher power capability, and the lower k factor, resulting in higher gain bandwidth products in APDs (© 2010 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)