Plastic Optical Fiber (POF) and Polymer Clad Silica (PCS) fiber are actively developed for Gigabit. The demand for large area and high bandwidth photodetectors is increasing. For POF/PCS systems transmitting data rate from 1Gb/s to 3.2Gb/s, GaAs Metal-semiconductor-metal photodetectors (MSM PDs) are attractive solution.

We have fabricated MSM PDs on 4" GaAs wafers. The large active area of 250m provides high alignment tolerances and high bandwidth with low-cost packaging solutions. The technology is targeted for very short distance optical interconnects in the field of consumer electronics and datacom. The datacom applications include optical backplanes and inter-rack connections. The technology fills a gap in the previously available receiver technology. The new devices enable high-speed operation in the diameter or larger.