We report vertically-illuminated, resonant cavity enhanced, graphene-Si Schottky photodetectors (PDs) operating at 1550nm. These exploit internal photoemission at the graphene-Si interface. To obtain spectral selectivity and enhance responsivity, the PDs are integrated with an optical cavity, resulting in multiple reflections at resonance, and enhanced absorption in graphene. Our devices have wavelength-dependent photoresponse with external (internal) responsivity∼20mA/W (0.25A/W). The spectral-selectivity may be further tuned by varying the cavity resonant wavelength. Our devices pave the way for developing high responsivity hybrid graphene-Si free-space illuminated PDs for free-space optical communications, coherence optical tomography and light-radars.

Due to recent breakthroughs, silicon photonics is now the most active discipline within the field of integrated optics and, at the same time, a present reality with commercial products available on the market. Silicon photodiodes are excellent detectors at visible wavelengths, but the development of high-performance photodetectors on silicon CMOS platforms at wavelengths of interest for telecommunications has remained an imperative but unaccomplished task so far. In recent years, however, a number of near-infrared all-silicon photodetectors have been proposed and demonstrated for optical interconnect and power-monitoring applications. In this paper, a review of the state of the art is presented. Devices based on mid-bandgap absorption, surface-state absorption, internal photoemission absorption and two-photon absorption are reported, their working principles elucidated and their performance discussed and compared.

Silicon-based technologies provide an ideal platform for the monolithic integration of photonics and microelectronics. In this context, a variety of passive and active silicon photonic devices have been developed to operate at telecom and datacom wavelengths, at which silicon has minimal optical absorption -due to its bandgap of 1.12 eV. Although in principle this transparency window limits the use of silicon for optical detection above 1.1 µm, in recent years tremendous advances have been achieved in the field of all-silicon subbandgap photodetectors at telecom and datacom wavelengths -by taking advantage of new emerging materials and structures. In this paper, a review of the state of the art is presented.Devices based on defect-mediated absorption, two-photon absorption and the internal photoemission effect are reported, their working principles are elucidated and their performance discussed and compared.