A silicon avalanche photodetector fabricated with standard CMOS technology with over 1 THz gain-bandwidth product

We present a silicon avalanche photodetector (APD) fabricated with standard complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology without any process modification or special substrates. The CMOS-APD is based on N ⁺/P-well junction, and its current-voltage characteristics, responsivity, avalanche gain, and photodetection frequency response are measured. Gain-bandwidth product over 1 THz is achieved with the CMOS-APD having avalanche gain of 569 and 3-dB photodetection bandwidth of 3.2 GHz.