Ga(0.47)In(0.53)As Ultra High Gain, High Sensitivity Photoconductors Grown by Chloride Vapor Phase Epitaxy.

We report highly sensitive planar, interdigitated Ga((0.47)In (0.54)As photoconductive detectors prepared by trichloride vapor phase epitaxy. The devices exhibit dc gains as high as 10(4) at 1.3micron. For a bit of rate of 500 Mbit/s a sensitivity of P=-35.4 dBm has been measured at 1.55micron. With devices having unity gain quantum efficiencies of eta =33% we obtain etaP=-40 dBm matching the highest sensitivity measured with a PIN photodetector at similar bit rates. The devices show responsivities in excess of 3000 A/W and detectiveties ranging between 10(12) - 10(13) cmHz(1/2)W(-1). These values represent the highest performance that has ever been achieved with photoconductors in this wavelength range.