Monte Carlo Analysis of Process Variations in Metal-Semiconductor-Metal Photodetectors for N anophotonic Interconnects Application

Modern fabrication processes are prone to manufacturing variations. These phenomena may lead to significant changes in the circuit characteristics after fabrication compared to the design stage. Therefore, it is important to take stochastic uncertainties into account during the early stages of design phase. CMOS-compatible waveguide-coupled Metal-Semiconductor- Metal photodetectors (MSM PDs) fabricated in Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) process, are promising structures to be used as detector at the receiver end of on-chip nanophotonic interconnects. In this paper, we have characterized the impacts of manufacturing variation on MSM PDs utilizing a Monte Carlo (MC) approach. Process variation data are extracted from literature. We have studied the Bit-Error-Rate (BER) of a nanophotonic interconnect as a performance metric. Our analysis shows the performance of the link is significantly affected by variations in MSM PD. We have studied two methods for compensation of variation effects. Finally, we have discussed the effects of variations on power consumption.