PIN Germanium Photodetector Fabrication Issues and Manufacturability

We have designed and fabricated high-performance germanium vertical and lateral PIN photodetectors which can be integrated into electronic-photonic circuits and manufactured in a standard CMOS foundry. The performance of these devices will be reported in another paper. This paper describes production process issues and manufacturability. The intent of this paper is to provide solutions to fabrication process issues, to provide methods of cutting costs by simplifying fabrication processes, and to improve yield by widening the process tolerance windows. This paper discusses all the process issues encountered and provides solutions for each of them.