Monolithic integration of light emitting diodes, photodetector and receiver circuit in standard CMOS technology

Abstract

A monolithic silicon CMOS optoelectronic integrated circuit (OEIC) is designed and fabricated with standard 0.35 ?m CMOS technology. This OEIC circuit consists of light emitting diodes (LED), silicon dioxide waveguide, photodiodes and receiver circuit. The silicon LED operates in reverse breakdown mode and can be turned on at 8.5 V 10 mA. The silicon dioxide waveguide is composed of multiple layers of silicon dioxide between different metals layers. A two PN-junctions photodetector composed of n-well/p-substrate junction and p+ active implantation/n-well junction maximizes the depletion region width. The readout circuitry in pixels is exploited to handle as small as 0.1 nA photocurrent. Simulation and testing results show that the optical emissions powers are about two orders higher than the low frequency detectivity of silicon CMOS photodetector and receiver circuit.