A method of wafer bonding is demonstrated which significantly reduces the thermal expansion mismatch stress, by removing the substrate before the high temperature anneal, thereby allowing elastic accommodation of the thin device layers. Record low dark current Si/InGaAs pin detectors have been realized

It is shown that a previous comment on quantum well infrared photodetectors is not correct. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.

Planar Si/InGaAs wafer fused p-i-n photodetectors were fabricated and measured. They show high internal quantum efficiency, high speed, record low dark current, and no evidence of charge trapping, recombination centers, or a bandgap discontinuity at the heterointerface.

The performance of a GaAs based optoelectronic receiver is described. The receiver has an MSM photodiode, a preamplifier, a postamplifier, a comparator, a decision circuit and an ECL driver, all integrated on the same chip. An error rate of < 10-9 has been demonstrated at 2.4 Gbit/s.

The fabrication and performance characteristics of a receiver electronics array for optical data links and parallel optical interconnects are described. The 18-channel array operates at 622 Mbit/s with a 10-15 error rate.

A detailed study of the important role of temperature and gas ambient on the bonding between Si and InGaAs wafers was performed. The heterointerface was characterized by fabricating p-i-n photodetectors and measuring the forward and reverse currents, the capacitance, the absolute quantum efficiency, and the response bandwidth. Clear evidence for a thin tunneling barrier is found for nonoptimum fusing conditions.

Calculations are presented on the optimization of the high-frequency response of superlattice and bulk avalanche photodiodes (APD's). The thickness of the avalanche and absorption regions, as well as the electric fields in these layers are optimized, as is the hetero-interface field. We find that high-performance APD's operating up to 20 GHz are feasible.

The advances in parallel optical transmitter and receiver array technologies for large computing applications are described. Parallel data lines with 16 and 32 channels, with each channel operating at 1 Gb/s and 500 Mb/s respectively, have been demonstrated.

We have fabricated and measured detailed bit error rate experiments on a 12 channel optical interconnect transmitter operating at rates up to 1.25 Gb/s per channel, using InGaAsP/InP /spl lambda/=1.3 /spl mu/m lasers. The lasers are highly uniform, the channel crosstalk is less than 1 dB, and the mode selective losses are low (<1 dB). This transmitter has been demonstrated in an architecture which would allow the transmission of 120 channels of 100-Mb/s uncompressed video signals.< >

We propose and demonstrate a 1 Gb/s high quantum efficiency Si MSM metal-semiconductor-metal detector which is complementary metal-oxide semiconductor compatible. The detector absorbs over 50% of the light entering the active layer at a wavelength of λ=0.88 μm.

We have fabricated and measured detailed bit error rate experiments on a 12 channel parallel optical interconnect transmitter operating at 1 Gb/s per channel, using InGaAsP/InP (lambda) equalsQ 1.3 micrometers lasers. The lasers are highly uniform, the channel crosstalk is less than 1 dB, and the mode selective losses are low (< 1 dB). This transmitter has been demonstrated in an architecture which would allow the transmission of 120 channels of 100 Mb/s uncompressed video signals. We have also demonstrated a novel high speed high quantum efficiency CMOS compatible Si MSM detector which would be ideal for monolithically integrated receiver arrays.

The increasing need for higher bandwidth interconnections between computer links, ATM switches, multimedia applications, and telecommunication switches has led to a large amount of research on high speed optical interconnects.

An 18 channel 0.5 μm CMOS optical receiver array operating at 622 Mb/s/ch with an aggregate throughput of 10 Gb/s has been fabricated. Experimental results indicate a BER of <10-14 at -10 dBm optical input for transmission through 30 meters of multimode fiber. Total DC power dissipation is less than 3 W

Radiation detectors that work at mid-infrared and longer wavelengths have many applications, including night vision, navigation, weather monitoring, flight control and early warning radars. The absorption lines of many gas molecules – such as ozone, water, carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide – occur at these wavelengths (between 3 and 18 μm), so infrared detectors can be used to monitor pollution, humidity and the distribution of different molecular species in the atmosphere.