A monolithic 5 Gb/s p-i-n/HBT integrated photoreceiver circuit realized from chemical beam epitaxial material

The authors report on a high performance monolithic photoreceiver fabricated from chemical beam epitaxy (CBE) grown InP/InGaAs heterostructures, incorporating a p-i-n photodetector followed by a transimpedance preamplifier circuit configured from heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs). The optoelectronic integrated circuit (OEIC) was fabricated on a semi-insulating Fe-doped InP substrate. Microwave on-wafer measurements of the frequency response of the transistors yielded unity current gain cutoff frequencies of 32 GHz and maximum oscillation frequencies of 28 GHz for collector currents between 2 and 5 mA. The photoreceiver was operated up to 5 Gb/s, at which bit rate a sensitivity of -18.8 dBm was measured at a wavelength of 1.5 mu m. The results demonstrate that the CBE growth technique is suitable for high performance HBT-based OEICs.<>