High-speed uni-traveling carrier photodiode for 2 μm wavelength application

Current optical communication systems operating at the 1.55 μm wavelength band may not be able to continually satisfy the growing demand on data capacity within the next few years. Opening a new spectral window around the 2 μm wavelength with recently developed hollow-core photonic bandgap fiber and a thulium-doped fiber amplifier is a promising solution to increase transmission capacity due to the low-loss and wide-bandwidth properties of these components at this wavelength band. However, as a key component, the performance of current high-speed photodetectors at the 2 μm wavelength is still not comparable with those at the 1.55 μm wavelength band, which chokes the feasibility of the new spectral window. In this work, we demonstrate, for the first time to our knowledge, a high-speed uni-traveling carrier photodiode for 2 μm applications with InGaAs/GaAsSb type-II multiple quantum wells as the absorption region, which is lattice-matched to InP. The devices have the responsivity of 0.07 A/W at 2 μm wavelength, and the device with a 10 μm diameter shows a 3 dB bandwidth of 25 GHz at −3  V bias voltage. To the best of our knowledge, this device is the fastest photodiode among all group III-V and group IV photodetectors working in the 2 μm wavelength range.