Abstract
Abstract Integrated silicon nanophotonics has rapidly established itself as intriguing research field, whose outlets impact numerous facets of daily life. Indeed, nanophotonics has propelled many advances in optoelectronics, information and communication technologies, sensing and energy, to name a few. Silicon nanophotonics aims to deliver compact and high-performance components based on semiconductor chips leveraging mature fabrication routines already developed within the modern microelectronics. However, the silicon indirect bandgap, the centrosymmetric nature of its lattice and its wide transparency window across optical telecommunication wavebands hamper the realization of essential functionalities, including efficient light generation/amplification, fast electro-optical modulation, and reliable photodetection. Germanium, a well-established complement material in silicon chip industry, has a quasi-direct energy band structure in this wavelength domain. Germanium and its alloys are thus the most suitable candidates for active functions, i.e. bringing them to close to the silicon family of nanophotonic devices. Along with recent advances in silicon–germanium-based lasers and modulators, short-wave-infrared receivers are also key photonic chip elements to tackle cost, speed and energy consumption challenges of exponentially growing data traffics within next-generation systems and networks. Herein, we provide a detailed overview on the latest development in nanophotonic receivers based on silicon and germanium, including material processing, integration and diversity of device designs and arrangements. Our Review also emphasizes surging applications in optoelectronics and communications and concludes with challenges and perspectives potentially encountered in the foreseeable future.
Highlights
In the recent years, the appetite for data traffics was heightened by the Internet era, social networks and streaming media by continuously calling upon faster and immediate connections between Internet of Things devices [1, 2]
Si–Ge photodetectors are developing at a remarkable pace on a year-byyear basis, owing to breakthroughs in material processing, complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) integration and device designs and engineering
A great advantage of Si–Ge photodetectors over existing alternatives (III–V-based devices, mainly) lies in the wellmastered and modern chip manufacturing in a Si environment and its perspective of compatibility with electronic circuits integration. This includes a wide variation of affordable SOI platforms, high-quality Ge epitaxy, costsharing Si foundry models, and broadened opportunities for photonic-electronic co-integration
Summary
The appetite for data traffics was heightened by the Internet era, social networks and streaming media by continuously calling upon faster and immediate connections between Internet of Things devices [1, 2]. A wealth of basic building blocks has been developed, including low-loss and high-performance waveguides and devices [22, 23], silicon (Si)-based [24,25,26] or germanium (Ge)-based [26,27,28] light sources, high-speed optical modulators [29, 30], as well as photodetectors [31,32,33] These achievements will likely be stepping stones to improve the performance of, and bringing novel functions to, monolithic group-IV-based platforms. On-chip optical receivers built upon Si and Ge semiconductors offer a set of levers to meet targets for cost-effective, bandwidth-enhanced and energy-aware applications in optoelectronics outlets as in computation and communication networks In this Review, we discuss recent advances in the field of group-IV photodetectors, in particular those made out of Si and Ge/Ge-based alloys.
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