Design and Analysis of Ultra-High-Speed Near-Ballistic Uni-Traveling-Carrier Photodiodes Under a 50-Ω Load for High-Power Performance

We demonstrate a near-ballistic uni-travelingcarrier photodiode (NBUTC-PD) with a scaled-down epi-layer structure designed for high-power performance in the sub-THz frequency regime. Compared with UTC-PDs, NBUTC-PDs offer a higher optimum bias voltage for the near-ballistic transport of electrons, which leads to improvement in the output power performance. Furthermore, a small load resistance (<50 Omega), which would sacrifice the output power for minimizing the output ac voltage swing on dc bias point, is not necessary. By scaling down the collector layer thickness and active area of the NBUTC-PDs, we achieve a large optical-to-electrical bandwidth (250 GHz) and a high saturation current (17 mA), which is close to the theoretical maximum, under a 50-Omega load and -2-V bias.