Bandwidth enhanced metal-semiconductor-metal photodetectors based on backgated ip structures

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Abstract
We report on theoretical and experimental results on a novel metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) photodetector with a backgate provided by a p-doped layer. The backgate allows extremely short sweep-out times for the holes, due to strong electric fields normal to the surface. Thus, long tails due to slow moving holes and screening of the external drift fields by hole space charge accumulation at high optical power, which lead to a degradation of the time response of conventional MSM photodetectors, are avoided. The high frequency performance measured up to 8 GHz in the time and frequency domain showed a significant reduction of the bandwidth limiting hole tail compared to standard MSM photodetectors.