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Review

Recent Advances in Si-Compatible Nanostructured Photodetectors

by
Rahaf Douhan
,
Kirill Lozovoy
*,
Andrey Kokhanenko
,
Hazem Deeb
,
Vladimir Dirko
and
Kristina Khomyakova
Faculty of Radiophysics, National Research Tomsk State University, Lenin Av. 36, 634050 Tomsk, Russia
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Technologies 2023, 11(1), 17; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies11010017
Submission received: 20 December 2022 / Revised: 16 January 2023 / Accepted: 21 January 2023 / Published: 24 January 2023
(This article belongs to the Section Quantum Technologies)
Browse Figures
Versions Notes

Abstract

:
In this review the latest advances in the field of nanostructured photodetectors are considered, stating the types and materials, and highlighting the features of operation. Special attention is paid to the group-IV material photodetectors, including Ge, Si, Sn, and their solid solutions. Among the various designs, photodetectors with quantum wells, quantum dots, and quantum wires are highlighted. Such nanostructures have a number of unique properties, that made them striking to scientists’ attention and device applications. Since silicon is the dominating semiconductor material in the electronic industry over the past decades, and as germanium and tin nanostructures are very compatible with silicon, the combination of these factors makes them the promising candidate to use in future technologies.

1. Introduction

During the last century, light detection methods have improved significantly, from thermal detectors to photon detectors, focal plane arrays, and single-photon avalanche detectors [1]. Nowadays you can reach any piece of information in a matter of milliseconds, or even less, due to the technological developments that have happened in the past several decades. The world is now full of different technologies that have made our lives much easier. It is so easy to communicate using many different means from landlines to optical fibers and satellite communications. The more communication methods develop, the more secure and fast transmission technology is needed. This fact forces the scientific community to develop light-transmitting systems and these needs support a big interest in the light detection area.
Currently, nanostructures with quantum wells (QW) and quantum dots (QD) are very widely used to create photodetectors in the visible and infrared ranges. At the same time, for various applications, various semiconductor material systems are used that most fully satisfy the specific requirements for device structures: III–V (GaAs, AlGaAs, etc.), II–VI (CdHgTe), IV–IV (GeSi, GeSn, GeSiSn), and others. However, all their potentialities are not implemented so far and they remain one of the most promising structures for creating optoelectronic devices.
A characteristic feature of all types of low-dimensional structures is the manifestation of the effects of spatial (dimensional) quantization, caused by the limitation of the free movement of charge carriers in one or several directions. Size quantization effects lead to a significant change in the energy spectrum of electrons and holes and the appearance of discrete energy levels and intermediate-allowed energy bands entirely located in the band gap of the semiconductor. This, in turn, leads to the appearance of new unique properties of such structures, which make it possible to create completely new types of optoelectronic devices on their basis [2].
For the first time, the existence of spatial quantization effects in low-dimensional semiconductor structures (nanostructures) was experimentally demonstrated by Dingle et al. in the first half of the 1970s when studying optical properties of AlGaAs-GaAs heterostructures with GaAs quantum well [3]. Germanium quantum dots in silicon became one of the central themes of research in the early 1990s, when they were first obtained in the experiments by Eaglesham, Mo et al. [4,5]. Almost immediately, quantum-well effects were observed experimentally in this system [6].
The main requirements for choosing photodetectors are good performance, operation at the highest possible temperatures, and low manufacturing costs. In addition, today it seems necessary to create on a single chip the entire set of components of fiber-optic communication lines, including light-emitting devices and photodetectors. To reduce the costs of such systems, it is necessary that a larger number of components be made on the basis of typical silicon technology methods.
Silicon itself is transparent to radiation with a wavelength greater than 1.1 microns. Good photosensitivity in the region of λ ≈ 1.5 μm is possessed by germanium photodetectors. The Ge/Si system may be also supplemented by tin, which extends the responsivity up to 2 μm. In this regard, prospects are outlined for the creation of high-speed photodetectors based on Si–Ge–Sn heterostructures with high sensitivity at room temperature in the spectral range of quartz fiber transparency of 1.3 and 1.55 µm.
Besides that, the adding of tin provides an opportunity to control the lattice constant and energy gap independently. Among the other advantages of group-IV materials is the possibility to create multispectral detectors, rather high mobility of carriers, and fast-speed operation, along with low noise, simple design, and highly-developed technology of synthesis.
The integration of silicon, germanium, and tin heterostructures with a silicon chip and their compatibility with silicon electronic and photonic circuits has great potential for the development of low-cost telecommunication optoelectronic modules for fiber optic communication lines operating in the telecommunication wavelength range [7,8,9,10,11,12,13].
One of the main methods for obtaining low-dimensional structures today is molecular beam epitaxy, the main advantages of which include low temperatures and growth rates, the possibility of abrupt interruption and resumption of growth, and precise control of the composition of the main substance and impurity concentrations. In this case, the analysis of the grown structures and the control of the necessary parameters can be carried out directly in the synthesis process.
Molecular beam epitaxy and other modern technological and material advances in semiconductors have brought the possibility of fabricating heterostructures utilizing quantum mechanical features. For example, creating quantum wells and self-assembled quantum dots allowed researchers to manufacture better photodetectors with higher performance.
In this review, we considered the latest and most modern photodetectors in the current scientific literature, stating the types and materials while highlighting the features of each work with special attention to Ge-Si photodetectors. These heterostructures with quantum wells and dots have a number of unique properties that made it striking to scientists’ attention and device applications. Since silicon is the dominating semiconductor material in the electronic industry over the past decades, and as germanium nanostructures are very compatible with silicon, that made them a better fit and promising candidate to use in future technologies.

2. Thin Film and Quantum Well Photodetectors

A quantum well is a very thin layer of one material with narrow bandgap is situated between two materials with wider bandgaps. As a result a potential step is formed. This potential well limits the motion of carriers in one direction while they are free to move in two other directions. When the width of the potential well is small enough, the energy spectrum of carriers becomes discrete and their motion in the thin layer becomes quantized. In this review we will consider one of the simplest quantum well devices—quantum well photodetector.
The quantum well photodetector operation relies on the intersubband absorption within either the conduction band (for electrons) or the valence band (for holes). The principle of operation of a quantum well photodetector can be explained by the basic laws of quantum mechanics. The quantum well is equivalent to the classical problem of motion of a particle in a box. To obtain the energy spectrum of such particle the time independent Schrödinger equation should be solved.
The SiGe/Si material system almost immediately proved to be perspective for various applications of nanostructures in electronics and optoelectronics. Then, SiGeSn material system in various combinations of constituent elements became very promising, since within their framework it is possible to control the band gap and obtain direct-gap semiconductors. These materials can be used to create photodetectors, solar cells, and light-emitting devices, successfully competing with materials traditionally for optoelectronics based on III–V and II–VI compounds [14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23].
GeSn techniques have drawn a lot of attention of Si-based technology in the last couple decades because the operating wavelengths range of this system spreads into the near infrared and short-wave infrared regions. Generally, scientific research on GeSn detectors has involved an increase in the past decade leading to the development of high-performance GeSn detectors. Today, there are several photodetectors based on Si-Ge. One of them is Ge-Si-Sn alloy, which is widely used in quantum well infrared photodetectors.
For example, in the work [24] a photoconductor detector made of one layer of GeSn on Ge, and working in the range between 1.5–2 µm, was shown (Figure 1).
The photoconductor GeSn samples used in this photodetector were grown using a reduced-pressure chemical vapor deposition technology. A study has been conducted on this photoconductor using 0.9, 3.2, and 7% Sn. Electrical and optical characteristics under 300 to 77 K were measured and the results of the detectivity, dark current, and responsivity were observed and measured under equivalent conditions. It was noted that the higher the temperature the less the performance of this photodetector is, which is caused by the decrease in the number of thermally activated carriers. This leads to a higher noise currents, while the responsivity of the photoconductor shows the linear increase with applied voltage that is indicative of the photoconductive gain [24].
Another study has been made on GeSn alloy where a photodiode with one layer of Ge quantum well was investigated [25]. The structure was grown on Si by molecular beam epitaxy. Figure 2 shows a schematic cross-section of the p-i-n photodetector structure. The photodetector was fabricated with quasiplanar technology.
The 1550 nm photodiode was investigated and the electrical and optical characteristics were measured under certain conditions. The dark current density of the photodiode increased by more than one order of magnitude, which was due to the high Sn concentration in this sample. The optical responsivity of the photodetector was also studied, which had shown the excellent quality of the fabricated GeSn layers.
A different study had been done based on one layer GeSn on Si [26]. The GeSn samples were grown using reduced-pressure chemical vapor deposition technologies and mesa structures were fabricated by photolithography and wet chemical etch processes. Figure 3 shows a schematic cross-sectional view of the photodetector.
There were two samples with 7% and 10% tin. Electrical and optical characteristics were investigated for both samples. The reverse current density increased with the temperature as a result larger number of thermally activated carriers. The 10% Sn device showed higher current densities compared to that of the 7% Sn device at equal conditions due to the narrower bandgap, which also resulted in the larger number of thermally excited carriers. Other parameters were also studied such as detectivity for both samples. They have shown very close values under the same conditions [26]. This study has shown good performance and detectivity compared with the detectors dominating the market.
The next study with one layer structure used Ge on the Si system [27]. This paper considered a photodiode working at 1550 nm and consisting of a 300 nm thick Ge layer, which was fabricated using molecular beam epitaxy and standard etching and lithography techniques. The Ge p-i-n diode was grown on the Si substrate and covered by doped silicon capping layer. After the fabrication of p-i-n photodiode, the back side of the substrate was covered by black silicon. Optical power was induced from the rear side. The diameter of the mesa-structure was 400 µm, which is shown in Figure 4.
It was noted that the black silicon nanostructure did not spoil the I-V characteristics and acted similar to waveguide structures. This article established that the application of black silicon light-trapping structures is a possible technology to increase the responsivity of Ge-on-Si photodiodes. Besides that, rather good combination of bandwidth and responsivity was achieved, making these structures viable for ultra-fast applications for communication [27].
To enhance the absorption efficiency of the detector multiple layers with quantum wells may be used. One example with a GeSn/Ge multiple quantum wells (MQW) detector was shown in the recent work by Zhou et al. [28]. The multilayer p-i-n structure was grown on a 300-mm Ge-buffered Si substrate by reduced pressure chemical vapor deposition. Figure 5 shows a schematic diagram of the photodetector with a photon-trapping microstructure.
Characteristics investigations were made which have shown a flat photo response curve under a reverse bias voltage that indicates an efficient collection of photon-generated carriers and the capability of the photodetector regarding low-energy consumption. The dark current was investigated with and without a photon-trapping structure at room temperature. A low dark current density of 31.5 mA/cm2 was achieved which is higher if compared with other photodetectors, and is also considered to be among the lowest for group-IV photodetectors. The dark current density increased to 45.2 mA/cm2 at −1 V when the photon-trapping microstructure was incorporated. It was investigated and revealed that the increased dark current density mainly results from the increased surface leakage current introduced by the photon-trapping microstructure [28].
To sum up, these works enable group-IV photodetectors to be very perspective for various infrared systems. It is also desirable to monolithically integrate these detectors with lasers, transistors, waveguides, modulators and other devices on one silicon platform. A lattice matched SiGeSn multiple quantum well structures should be developed to reduce the noise currents of this type of photodetectors in the future [28].

3. Quantum Dot Photodetectors

A quantum dot is a nanometer-sized semiconductor particle. The concept of “artificial atoms”, or quantum dots, has emerged since the implement of molecular beam epitaxy and the first work on the reduced dimensionality of semiconductors. Quantum dots are widely used for their fully discrete energy spectrum and unique optical properties due to quantum size effects. They absorb and emit light of specific wavelengths if their energy spectra are matched. These wavelengths can be accurately controlled by changing size, shape or material composition of the particle. Hence, quantum dots are exploited in active layers for many widely-spread devices, for example, quantum dot displays and photon detectors.
Thus, an alternative to photodetectors based on quantum wells can be photodetectors with quantum dots. Such heterostructures are promising for photovoltaic applications and as receiving modules in fiber optic communication lines. Quantum dots have been successfully integrated in existing types of photodetectors, significantly enhancing their performance.
To realize all the potential advantages of photodetectors with quantum dots for the near-infrared range (increased sensitivity to normally incident radiation, high photoelectric multiplication factor, low thermal generation rate, narrow sensitivity range), the photosensitive region of the detector must contain an array of quantum dots with high density (on the order of 1011–1012 cm−2) [7,29,30,31].
The principles of operation of a photodetector with quantum dots are similar to those with quantum wells. The only difference is that in a quantum dot, the carrier is limited in its movement in all three directions, hence, zero-dimensional systems of carriers are realized [32]. It is expected that due to this limitation, quantum dot photodetectors can provide a better performance, namely higher operating temperatures (due to longer carrier lifetimes), low dark current, and high photoelectric gain [33], which ultimately translates into high sensitivity and detectability [34]. In addition, due to different selection rules for the absorption of light in photodetectors with quantum dots, it becomes possible to absorb incident radiation polarized along the normal to the layers of quantum dots.
In order to achieve this regime, self-assembled islands are embedded into layers of semiconductors with a larger energy gap and appropriate band discontinuities. Due to their properties, quantum dots are of high interest to modern technologies.
Silicon-based semiconductor materials with nanosized germanium inclusions have been actively studied since the early 1990s [4,5]. Such nanoheterostructures with self-organizing germanium quantum dots on silicon, grown by molecular beam epitaxy, exhibit a number of new nanoscale effects (associated with low-dimensional quantization effects), which are promising from the point of view of their application in optoelectronic devices [35,36,37,38,39,40].
Next, we will introduce some of the recent scientific studies that contained a quantum dot infrared photodetector with different silicon-related materials and a different number of quantum dot layers.
Starting with one layer of quantum dots, the following study shows an ultrathin layer photodetector with Ge quantum dots [41]. A 13 nm active layer of Ge quantum dots in SiO2 matrix was fabricated on n-Ge substrate with (100) orientation. Quantum dots diameters varied from approximately 3 to 8 nm. The schematic diagram of the photodetector is shown in Figure 6.
The current-voltage characteristics of the photodetector were studied at various temperatures which varied from 77 K to 300 K in the dark and under illumination with the 640 and 1550 nm light. Reducing the active layer thickness to an ultrathin regime produced a high dark current at ambient conditions. Rise and fall times below 10 ns and 25 ns were achieved at −1 V in the visible and near-infrared ranges which is very promising [41]. This work has demonstrated that high quantum efficiency and fast response speed can be achieved in Ge quantum dot based photodetectors simultaneously at low voltage. Also, this work highlighted the importance of the thickness dependence of response speed in Ge quantum dot photodetectors.
A new example of quantum dot photodetectors was shown in the work [42]. Here a Ge quantum dot photodetector with one layer of quantum dots that has a thickness of 160 nm was fabricated. Ge and SiO2 were cosputtered on the n-Ge substrate. The schematic diagram of the photodetector is shown in Figure 7.
The current-voltage characteristics were investigated in the range of wavelengths from 400 to 1550 nm. Results on the responsivity, reflectance, and quantum efficiency of the detector were presented and it was shown that the detector had its best performance and efficiency between 500–600 nm. High detectivity was achieved at the temperature range of 100–300 K [42].
Next, a midinfrared photodetector based on Ge quantum dots in Si has been presented [43]. The multilayer Si/Ge samples were synthesized by molecular beam epitaxy on the p+-Si(001) substrate. The schematic design of the detector is shown in Figure 8.
Ten layers of germanium quantum dots separated by 50 nm silicon barriers served as active layers. Each Si barrier contained a boron delta-doping layer inserted 5 nm below the Ge-wetting layer. The active region was sandwiched between the 200-nm-thick intrinsic Si buffer and the cap layers. Finally, a 200-nm-thick p+−Si top contact layer was deposited. The noise current, detectivity, and responsivity as a function of voltage and temperature were considered and the study has shown that such a device exhibited low dark current and operated until 200 K [43].
One more study with a multilayer quantum dot photodetector was introduced next where the multiple germanium quantum dot layers were grown on Si0.82Ge0.18 virtual substrate [44]. Ten layers of germanium quantum dots were separated by 35-nm Si0.82Ge0.18 barriers (Figure 9).
In this study another photodetector sample was fabricated based on pure silicon instead of SiGe for performance comparison purpose. Both samples have shown a responsivity in the whole mid-wave infrared range. Also, there was a significant improvement in the Ge/SiGe detector sensitivity over the wavelength region from 3 to 5 µm, as compared to the Ge/Si heterostructure. This is associated with the smaller hole effective mass in SiGe layers, which enables more efficient light absorption and photoexcited hole transportation. The photoconductive gain was studied and the noise characteristics were measured, and the SiGe detector has shown a larger gain, probably due to the increase of the hole mobility, and, therefore, the decrease of the hole transit time through the device. Moreover, in this work, a metallic plasmonic structure was added to the detector to achieve better performance of the quantum dot photodetector. The measured responsivity of the SiGe-based photodetector with and without the plasmonic structure have shown that plasmonic structures enhance photocurrent at the plasmon resonance frequencies compared with bare detectors [44].
The development of these works led to the emergence of the idea of using plasmonic effects and microresonators in order to enhance the properties of silicon-germanium photosensitive structures [45]. These attempts have shown a significant increase in the photodetector parameters, such as resonant responsivity, when using such plasmonic structures [46].
Finally, we will discuss a study that has been made on a photodetector with mixed technologies for producing nanowires and quantum dots. Nanowires are structures where motion of carriers is limited in two of three directions.
In work [47], a silicon-on-insulator substrate was used for the growth of Ge quantum dots on silicon with subsequent fabrication of a quantum wire. Ge quantum dots were synthesized by molecular beam epitaxy. Quantum wires with the length of 10 μm and the width of 100 nm were fabricated by electron lithography. Figure 10 shows the cross-section of the fabricated photodetector.
This study demonstrated a simple and scalable fabrication process for achieving high-performance short-wave infrared photodetectors using Ge quantum dots in a single Si nanowire on CMOS-compatible SOI platforms. Moreover, the measurement of photocurrents with varying polarization of light revealed that the device can act as a polarization-sensitive photodetector [47].

4. Future Directions

Further development of the works on the fabrication of GeSn/Ge multiple-quantum-well p-i-n photodiodes has resulted in the simultaneous realization of low dark current and high detectivity in the structures similar to those shown in Figure 5. An ultralow dark current density of 16.3 mA/cm2 was achieved in the work [48] due to the low threading dislocation density in the pseudomorphic GeSn layer [49], along with the high responsivity of 0.307 A/W and specific detectivity of 1.37 × 1010 cm·Hz1/2·W−1 at 1550 nm. Even higher values of performance characteristics are theoretically predicted for the GeSn multiple quantum well photodetector with alternating layers of GeSn with different compositions [50]. The recently proposed approach suggests the use of a GeSn-on-insulator platform for the creation of metal-semiconductor-metal photodetectors with a sensitivity in the spectral range of up to 2.2 µm [51].
The works on using of GeSiSn solid solution layers have also confirmed that this material family is very promising for the fabrication of photodetectors in terms of extending their range of operating wavelengths and enhancing sensitivity [52,53,54,55,56].
The main problems of the application of nanostructures in photodetectors are connected with the low quality of the obtained structures. The improvement of technologies of synthesis should significantly increase the performance of quantum well and quantum dot photodetectors. The necessity to decrease the threading dislocation density, the number of different phase boundaries on the surface, and micro-cracks (caused by lattice mismatch) to suppress dark currents was stated repeatedly in the literature. On the other hand, tensile-strained layers may be used for the directed strain engineering of the energy spectra.
Where quantum dots are concerned, they have lower dark currents than quantum well structures due to their higher activation energy of thermionic emission (because of strong quantum confinement of carriers) and reduced phonon scattering, resulting in a longer carrier lifetime. However, it is very important to achieve the highest possible homogeneity of the ensemble of nanoislands in terms of their shape and size to reduce dark current densities. Special growth modes or prepattering of the surface for the creation of sites of preferable formation of nanoislands (selective growth) are used to improve the homogeneity. Another method of suppressing noise currents is the use of hybrid designs such as quantum dots in a quantum well and quantum dots in a quantum wire, which allows the researchers to achieve lower dark current densities and higher operating temperatures by proper control and optimization of the thickness of a well or nanowire.
The performance characteristics of the photodetectors reviewed in the previous sections are summarized in Table 1. It may be concluded that in terms of their performance photodetectors based on group-IV elements approach their III–V and II–VI competitors, showing values of detectivities of an order of 1012 cm·Hz1/2·W−1 [57,58].
The use of various photon-trapping structures [59,60] and the creation of artificial roughness on one side of the detector is a typical route to increase the absorption coefficient and quantum efficiency of the device. For example, alternating materials with different refractive indices by heteroepitaxy results in a significant reflection at the interfaces. This is used to create optical Fabry-Perot resonators that reflect light back to the optical absorbing layer, thus effectively increasing the width of the physically thin absorbing layer. These techniques may also include exploiting distributed Bragg reflectors [61], capping the photosensitive structure with antireflection coatings [62], or using waveguide structures [63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71]. Works on the development of new designs of nanostructures [72,73], using graphene-like 2D materials [74,75,76,77,78] and exploiting the resonant cavity [79,80,81] and plasmonic effects [82,83] are also constantly being carried out.
One more complex way for the integration of photodetectors on a silicon chip is the fabrication of III–V epitaxial structures [84] or colloidal quantum dots [85,86,87,88] on a silicon substrate. Elements of other groups may also be used as a dopant in silicon or germanium [89,90]. Moreover, germanium photodiodes manufactured on Ge-on-insulator substrate, already showing very high performance, also fit the requirements of silicon-based technology [91]. Search for exotic nongroup IV elements combined with silicon is another route for the evolution of Si-compatible detectors [92].
In pace with the development of silicon-based photodetectors, a huge amount of work on the creation of group IV avalanche detectors (including single-photon avalanche diodes, SPAD) is carried out [93,94,95]. They are vital for a wide range of employment, from medical and LIDAR applications to quantum communication technologies [96,97,98]. Over the past decade, the academic and industrial community has achieved tremendous results in the improvement of the performance of SPADs [99,100,101].
Another very promising direction of further development in the field of silicon-based integration of electronic and photonic devices [102] is the creation of group IV light-emitting structures [103,104,105]. In recent years significant progress was achieved in the realization of GeSn [106,107,108] and diamond [109] laser-active media. The use of the GeSiSn ternary compound to improve the light-emitting characteristics of such structures also appears to be very promising [110]. Quantum dots are also considered important light-emitting nanostructures and have been intensively studied for several decades from the point of view of experimental aspects of the synthesis [111,112,113,114,115,116,117,118,119,120], their optical properties [121], and applications [122,123,124,125]. Finally, efficient group-IV single photon sources and semiconductor qubits [126,127,128,129,130] were recently shown, supporting the development of on-chip quantum information processing.

5. Conclusions

The performance of various types of photodetectors based on silicon, germanium, and tin is rapidly improving due to the dedicated efforts of many research groups. The bandwidth and quantum efficiency of such devices are comparable to those of their competitors in the face of devices based on III–V compounds and are sufficient for a number of applications. Thus, at present, no serious barriers are foreseen for the widespread use of Si-compatible group-IV-based nanostructured photodetectors.
The main advantages of silicon-based electronics and photonics, including their relative cheapness, highly-developed technology of synthesis, compatibility with silicon integrated circuits and CMOS-compatibility, opportunity to create multi-spectral detectors, and many others, make the research and industrial community confident in the long and bright future of this material system.
The reviewed devices may play a pivotal role in the establishment of anticipated low-cost and high-performance Si-based photonic-integrated circuits. All these results allow us to count on solving the problem of integrating all optoelectronic components on a single silicon chip in the nearest future.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, K.L., A.K.; writing—original draft preparation, R.D., K.L., H.D., V.D. and K.K.; writing—review and editing, K.L.; supervision, A.K.; project administration A.K.; funding acquisition, A.K. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research was funded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, grant number FSWM-2020-0048.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

The authors declare that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.

Acknowledgments

The reported study was supported by the Tomsk State University Development Programme (Priority 2030, No. 2.0.6.22).

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Figure 1. Cross-section view of the one-layer GeSn on Ge photoconductor.
Figure 1. Cross-section view of the one-layer GeSn on Ge photoconductor.
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Figure 2. Schematic cross-section of the GeSn on Ge p-i-n photodiode structure.
Figure 2. Schematic cross-section of the GeSn on Ge p-i-n photodiode structure.
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Figure 3. Schematic cross-sectional view of the GeSn on Ge p-i-n photodetector.
Figure 3. Schematic cross-sectional view of the GeSn on Ge p-i-n photodetector.
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Figure 4. Scheme of the black silicon Ge-on-Si photodiode.
Figure 4. Scheme of the black silicon Ge-on-Si photodiode.
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Figure 5. Schematic diagram of the multiple quantum wells GeSn/Ge photodetector with photon-trapping microstructure.
Figure 5. Schematic diagram of the multiple quantum wells GeSn/Ge photodetector with photon-trapping microstructure.
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Figure 6. Schematic diagram of the photodetector consisting of an ITO electrode and an active layer with quantum dots on top of an n-Ge substrate.
Figure 6. Schematic diagram of the photodetector consisting of an ITO electrode and an active layer with quantum dots on top of an n-Ge substrate.
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Figure 7. Schematic structure of the photodetector with Ge quantum dots in SiO2.
Figure 7. Schematic structure of the photodetector with Ge quantum dots in SiO2.
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Figure 8. Schematic drawing of the Ge/Si photodetector with 10 layers of quantum dots.
Figure 8. Schematic drawing of the Ge/Si photodetector with 10 layers of quantum dots.
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Figure 9. Schematic diagram of the Ge/SiGe photodetector with 10 layers of quantum dots.
Figure 9. Schematic diagram of the Ge/SiGe photodetector with 10 layers of quantum dots.
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Figure 10. Schematic diagram of phototransistor with single Si nanowire decorated with Ge quantum dots.
Figure 10. Schematic diagram of phototransistor with single Si nanowire decorated with Ge quantum dots.
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Table
Table 1. Comparison of the performance characteristics of various types of photodetectors.
Table 1. Comparison of the performance characteristics of various types of photodetectors.
ModelWavelengthResponsivityDark Current Density Detectivity
nmA/WmA/cm2cm·Hz1/2·W−1
One layer GeSn/Ge photoconductor [24]1550–
2000		0.18–1.0·109
One layer Ge/GeSn/Ge p-i-n photodiode [25]15500.2270–
One layer Ge/GeSn/Ge photodetector [26]1550–
2600		0.30104.0·109
Black silicon Ge-on-Si p-i-n photodiode [27]15500.34150–
Multiple quantum wells GeSn/Ge photodetector [28]1550–
2200		0.11402.1·108
Multiple quantum wells GeSn/Ge photodetector [48]1550–
2200		0.31161.4·1010
One layer SiO2: Ge QDs/Ge photodetector [41]640–
1550		0.47––
One layer SiO2: Ge QDs/Ge photodetector [42]400–
1550		1.12–2.0·1010
Multiple layer Ge QDs/Si photodetector [43]up to
4000		0.4310−66.2·1010
Multiple layer Ge QDs/SiGe photodetector [44]up to
6000		40–1.4·1011
Si nanowire: Ge QDs/SiO2/Si phototransistor [47]1200–
1700		5.50–9.3·1011
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Douhan, R.; Lozovoy, K.; Kokhanenko, A.; Deeb, H.; Dirko, V.; Khomyakova, K. Recent Advances in Si-Compatible Nanostructured Photodetectors. Technologies 2023, 11, 17. https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies11010017

AMA Style

Douhan R, Lozovoy K, Kokhanenko A, Deeb H, Dirko V, Khomyakova K. Recent Advances in Si-Compatible Nanostructured Photodetectors. Technologies. 2023; 11(1):17. https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies11010017

Chicago/Turabian Style

Douhan, Rahaf, Kirill Lozovoy, Andrey Kokhanenko, Hazem Deeb, Vladimir Dirko, and Kristina Khomyakova. 2023. "Recent Advances in Si-Compatible Nanostructured Photodetectors" Technologies 11, no. 1: 17. https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies11010017

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