Date of Award

3-26-2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Derrick Langley, PhD.

Abstract

As the digital age of rapidly expanding information systems and technology continue to grow and develop at an ever increasing rate, new fabrication media must be investigated in order to keep up with these trends. The modern age has been defined by the innovation and advancement of the semiconductor transistor specifically Silicon, however these days of exponential performance gain through gate minimization are coming to a close. One such field which shows great promise for meeting the challenges of the future is the integration of photonic and complementary metal oxide semiconductor components; leveraging the long standing fabrication history of Silicon devices. This document describes the characterization and analysis of integrated photodiodes for digital and analog applications. The photodiode is one small but necessary component for the integration of system-level photonic devices. A number of standard measurements were taken on the photodiodes to analyze their performance and potential application. Additionally, an anomalous detector behavior was investigated through both transient measurements to identify the driving mechanism of the abnormality. Through this testing the devices were found to perform with up to 30-GHz of bandwidth while maintaining dark currents below 5 nA. The non-linear behavior was observed under CW conditions and analyzed using the transient response of the photodiode. The transient response of the photodiode supported that the non-linear mechanism was photon-induced avalanche-like effect, however, further investigation is required. Additional work is described to further investigate this behavior, as well to identify potential effects on future application in system level communication designs.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-ENG-MS-15-M-071

DTIC Accession Number

ADA620230

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