GeSi photodetectors and electro-absorption modulators for Si electronic-photonic integrated circuits

The silicon electronic-photonic integrated circuit (EPIC) has emerged as a promising technology to break through the interconnect bottlenecks in telecommunications and on-chip interconnects. High performance photonic modulators and photodetectors compatible with Si complimentary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) devices are indispensable to achieve this goal. A photonic modulator generates optical "1" and "0" signals by switching the light on and off, while a photodetector converts the optical signals to electrical ones so that they can be processed by a CMOS circuit. Due to its compatibility with Si CMOS processing and adequate optoelectric properties, epitaxial GeSi material has been considered as a promising candidate to achieve this goal. This thesis investigates epitaxial GeSi photodetectors and electro-absorption (EA) modulators integrated with high index contrast Si(core)/Si02(cladding) waveguides to form an EPIC circuit on a Si platform with CMOS compatibility. Tensile strain is introduced into the GeSi material to enhance its optoelectronic properties. The effect of tensile strain on the band structure of Ge is systematically studied, and the deformation potential constants of Ge are derived from the experimental results with relatively high accuracy.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Liu, Jifeng, Ph. D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Lionel C. Kimerling.

• Materials Science and Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/38582
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/38582

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/38582