Design of a silicon RCE Schottky photodetector working at 1.55 microns

In this paper, the design of a resonant cavity-enhanced (RCE) Schottky photodetector, based on internal photoemission effect and working at 1.55 mu m, is presented. In order to estimate the theoretical quantum efficiency we take the advantage of analytical formulation of the internal photoemission effect (Fowler theory), and its extension for thin films, while for the optical analysis of device a numerical method, based on the transfer matrix method, has been implemented. Finally, we complete our design calculating bandwidth and bandwidth-efficiency product. Our numerical results prove that a quantum efficiency of 0.1% is obtained at resonant wavelength (1.55 mu m) with a very thin absorbing metal layer (30 nm). Theoretical values of 100 GHz and 100 MHz were obtained, respectively, for the carrier-transit time limited 3-dB bandwidth and bandwidth-efficiency. The proposed photodetector can work at room temperature and its fabrication is completely compatible with standard silicon technology.