Design and Optimization of Novel High Responsivity, Wideband Silicon Photodiode

Various types of proposed photodiodes fabricated using a 0.25 µm complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology are presented. The effects of different design layouts on the performance are compared for a wide range of light intensity, photodiode current, dark current and diode capacitance. Frequency response of these devices are also characterized and compared for different bias conditions. A high responsivity photodiode having a 3 dB bandwidth of 9.4 GHz at a reverse bias voltage of 5 V is demonstrated. The results show that the proposed photodiodes outperform the best silicon photodiodes reported so far.