A High Sensitivity and Modulation Contrast Photonic Demodulator for Time-of-Flight Application

This paper presents a new photonic demodulator with high sensitivity and modulation ability, which is important for Time-of-Flight (ToF) application. This proposed device called embedded guide gate photonic modulator or EGPD uses two gates inserted into the silicon to form an electric field to facilitate the extraction of the optical generated carrier in deep silicon. The influence of the embedded gate depth has been studied by TCAD simulation to achieve high sensitivity. To improve the frequency response of the EGPD with deep embedded gates, transfer channels are introduced into the embedded gates which makes the EGPD possible to be a potential device in the pixel of ToF CMOS image sensor.