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HIGH-END SILICON PHOTODIODE INTEGRATED CIRCUITS
Optoelectronic integrated circuits (OEICs) [1–3] are used for very compact designs and low-cost application—for example, for optical storage systems such as CD-ROM, DVD, digital video recording, enhanced video disc (EVD), and Blu-ray Disc (BD) or for fiber receivers such as low-cost data comm receivers for plastic optical fibers (POFs). They are important because the inherent compactness of monolithic optical integrated circuits gives the following advantages: good immunity against electromagnetic interference (EMI) due to very short interconnects between photodetectors and amplifiers, reduced chip area because of elimination of bondpads, improved reliability due to the elimination of bondpads and bond wires, cheaper mass production compared to discrete-, wire-bonded-, or some hybrid integrated circuits, and a larger −3-dB bandwidth compared to discrete- or wire-bonded circuits, because of the avoidance of parasitic bondpad capacitances.
Inexpensive optical receivers with top performance are in great demand. Especially the low-cost requirement permanently drives and pushes silicon photodiode integrated circuts (PDICs) instead of expensive III/V semiconductor receivers. For high data rates of more than 10 Gbit/s, III/V receivers have a better performance and it is useful to accept their high costs; but for lower data rates up to about 10 Gbit/s, silicon PDICs with their lower production ...
