High responsivity SiGe heterojunction phototransistor on silicon photonics platform.

We report on a novel near infrared SiGe phototransistor fabricated by a standard silicon photonics foundry. The device is first investigated by simulations. The fabricated devices are characterized in terms of current-voltage characteristics at different optical power. Typical phototransistors exhibit 1.55µm record responsivity at low optical power exceeding 232A/W and 42A/W at 5V and 1V bias, respectively. A differential detection scheme is also proposed for the dark current cancellation to significantly increase the device sensitivity.