Performance of Plasmonic Side-Coupled Waveguide Photodetector with Varying Schottky Barrier Height

The impact of Schottky barrier height (SBH) on the performance of a side-coupled plasmonic waveguide photodetector (WGPD) is theoretically investigated by 3D opto-electrical simulations. A general decrease of the cut-off frequency is observed for all studied barrier heights (0.1 eV to 0.6 eV), most pronounced in the range (0.3 - 0.4) eV. The degradation is an electrostatic effect caused by the formation of the Schottky barrier in the i-region of the device.