Optical and electrical characterization of GaAs-based high-speed and high-sensitivity delta-doped resonant cavity-enhanced HMSM photodetector

We have previously reported an AlGaAs-GaAs-based delta modulation doped resonant cavity-enhanced, heterostructure metal-semiconductor-metal (HMSM) photodetector design with wavelength selectivity, high sensitivity, and high-speed properties. In this paper, the influences of the resonant cavity and the delta modulation-doped layer on the optical and electrical performances of HMSM photodetectors have been studied by using the transmission line model and Ramo´s theorem, respectively. The microcavity offers narrow spectral bandwidth detection accompanied by a drastic increase of the optical field at the resonant wavelength, solving the tradeoff between high efficiency and high speed with the thinner absorption regions. The top AlGaAs delta modulation-doped layer presents an enhanced barrier height associated with the vertically oriented two-dimensional potential and field profiles rather than the horizontally oriented ones, providing very low dark current values and an increase in device responsivity and speed of the response. Optimizing the optical and electric field simultaneously results in high-performance photodetection without further scaling down the devices. Two separate groups of photodetectors with various geometries have been fabricated, characterized, and simulated: One with a delta modulation-doped structure, the other without this doped layer. Delta-doped photodetectors show wavelength selectivity at 850 nm with about a 30-nm full width at half-maximum (FWHM), 9.2 fA/μm² dark current, less than 30 fF capacitance, 10.6-ps FWHM, and 18.4-ps fall time. Photocurrent spectral response, dark current, time response, and capacitance-voltage measurements consistently show that the delta-doped detectors have the better optical and electrical performances over the undoped ones.