Theory and design of a tapered line distributed photodetector

We present the theory and design of a tapered line distributed photodetector (TLDP). In the previously demonstrated velocity-matched distributed photodetector (VMDP), high electrical bandwidth is achieved by proper termination in the input end to absorb reverse traveling waves, sacrificing one-half of the quantum efficiency. By utilizing the tapered line structure and phase matching between optical waves and microwaves in our analyzed structure, a traveling-wave photodetector is more realizable and ultrahigh bandwidth can be attained due to removal of the extra input dummy load that sacrifices one-half of the total quantum efficiency. To investigate the advantages of TLDP over VMDP, we calculate their electrical bandwidth performances by using an analytic photodistributed current model. We adopted low-temperature-grown (LTG) GaAs-based metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) traveling-wave photodetectors as example unit active devices in the analytic bandwidth calculation for their high-speed and high-power performances. Both VMDP and TLDP in our simulation are assumed to be transferred onto glass substrates, which would achieve high microwave velocity/impedance and make radiation loss negligible. The simulated bandwidth of a properly designed LTG GaAs MSM TLDP is ∼325 GHz, which is higher than the simulated bandwidth of the LTG GaAs MSM VMDP with an open-circuit input end (∼240 GHz) and is almost comparable to the simulated bandwidth of an input-terminated LTG GaAs MSM VMDP (∼330 GHz). This proposed method can be applied to the design of high-bandwidth distributed photodetectors for radio-frequency photonic systems and optoelectronic generation of high-power microwaves and millimeter waves.